HTML Lab FAQ

Browsers

Can we use Chrome instead of Firefox, since I regularly use Chrome?

For most things, yes. I use both, but I am more adept at Firefox, so I tend to use it. You can also use Safari, but if you're having trouble with Safari, try either Firefox or Chrome.

Changes

I made changes to my html file but they're not showing up in the browser. What happened?

First, make sure that you saved the file or that you pulled the most recent changes.
If you have saved the file, then the browser is probably caching the file. To save resources, the browser doesn't always send a new request to get the latest version of the file--it's hedging bets that the resource hasn't changed. If you hold down the shift key and reload, then that forces a reload of the resource.

Error

When I load the page, I get a "forbidden" error. What should I do?

There are two likely possibilities here:

• Is the page a symbolic link? If so, it may mean that the link is broken -- it's not to an existing file.

  Delete the symbolic link. Then, remake the link, using tab completion to make sure there are no typos in the path to the file.

• If the problem is on a regular file: change the permissions of the file to give others the ability to access the file using the chmod command. For example:
  chmod o+r myfile.html
  or, to change the permissions on all the files:
  chmod o+r *