CSS and Variable Passing 1

[bambock]

I recently saw something like this in a stylesheet link tag:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/marketer.css[highlight #ffcc99]?spts=20080307-1055[/highlight]" type="text/css" />

What is the purpose of the highlighted text? It looks like a time stamp being sent, but I've never seen a variable passed to CSS before. My guess is that used for tracking in httpd access logs???

Thanks for the info,
B

 

[ca8msm]

It is a method used to refresh users css files rather than the cached version. Say for example you made a change to your css file and it didn't have that time stamp variable. Your visitors would just use their cached version of the css when they visit your site and therefore not see the change you made. With the method above, the developer could change the time stamp and the browser would re-download the css file as it sees it as being a completely different file and therefore the visitor instantly sees the change.


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Mark,
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[bambock]

Great info. Thanks.