difference between preview in RStudio Viewer pane and browser window

[werkstattcodes]

Many thanks for this wonderful package!

I just updated to blogdown 0.21 and noticed a behavior which seems quite odd to me. I hope I didn't miss any
related info, but it seems this something new:

1. I made changes to my .css file.
2. I reopened RStudio, the blog was rendered with blogdown:::preview_site(startup = TRUE). The changes to the css are visible in RStudio's Viewer pane. Hence, all fine.
3. I click on 'show in new window' in RStudio's Viewer pane to see the blog in my browser (chrome).
4. The browser opens. but the changes to the css are no longer visible. Even after refreshing; reopening browser etc. I used the 'inspect' tool to check both the file in the viewer and in the browser. It seems as if these are effectively not the same file.

Any idea? Many thanks.

[cderv]

Hi @werkstattcodes, can you share an example so that is easier for me to reproduce and investigate ?

The css you modified is in static/ or in the theme/ folder ?

Thank you.

[cderv]

I can't reproduce for now. What I did:

• New blogdown website with default theme yihui/hugo-lithium
• Add a CSS mycss.css in static folder with simple css

h1 {
  color: red;
}

• Add in config.toml under [params] :

    customCSS= ["mycss.css"]

The viewer and the browser are correctly updated.

[werkstattcodes]

Hi,

many thanks for the quick response.

The changed css is located in themes/hugo-theme-basic/static/css/
https://github.com/werkstattcodes/blog

I didn't encounter the issue before updating blogdown.
Just restarted the computer etc. Issue remains.

r

[werkstattcodes]

just to update - i also created a new test blog as you suggested. Indeed, the issue does not arise. Must be something specific to my blog.

[cderv]

I think it could be related to how you browser is caching or not the resources. Often, there is a caching mechanism in memory to speed up website loading when you are surfing the web.

As you are using chrome, you can open Devtools Pane (F12), go into Network Tab and reload the page and see if the css is loaded from memory or not.

See here on column size

You maybe can close your browser or deactivate the cache (always or just when you are working on your website)
See the checkbox Disable Cache

Can you try that and tell me if that helps ?

[werkstattcodes]

yes, after checking 'disable cache' the changes to the css become visible in the browser. many thanks!

i don't know whether it's related: When I click in the viewer pane on some links in my blog, the blog opens in the browser. I can't navigate through the blog in the viewer pane. However, in the dummy blog set up earlier (hugo-lithium theme), I can navigate without being directed to the browser window. Not sure whether this is relevant. Just an oddity. In any case, thanks again!

[cderv]

i don't know whether it's related: When I click in the viewer pane on some links in my blog, the blog opens in the browser. I can't navigate through the blog in the viewer pane. However, in the dummy blog set up earlier (hugo-lithium theme), I can navigate without being directed to the browser window. Not sure whether this is relevant. Just an oddity. In any case, thanks again!

I don't think this is relative. It may come from your blogdown theme and the use of relative url. Normally, serve_site will insure hugo is run with relative url activated, but I guess there could be theme dependent stuff happening.

Anyway, unfortunatly, I think this is specific to your website and not a blogdown issue per-se. I'll close this issue, but feel free to open a new one for this specific issue if you want further help on this. Thanks!

[yihui]

When I click in the viewer pane on some links in my blog, the blog opens in the browser.

@werkstattcodes Normally this shouldn't happen, but it's up to the theme authors whether they use Hugo's relURL function to make sure URLs are relative. If a URL contains the full domain and protocol (like https://www.example.org/path/to/file/ instead of /path/to/file), it may be opened in the external browser.

One thing you could try is set relativeURLs to true in your config file.

BTW, I guess you do not have to disable cache entirely, but could try "force refresh" (Cmd + Shift + R on macOS---not sure what it is on Windows; perhaps Ctrl + F5).

[cderv]

not sure what it is on Windows; perhaps Ctrl + F5

MAJ+F5 in chrome or CTRL+MAJ+R will work also.