More and more Slater-powered Webflow projects are running in production! So, let's talk about what that means. Slater works a little differently in a production environment. Instead of serving a file from the Slater server, we serve a file from Amazon S3. The S3 file is extremely resilient, and by default, it is cached by the browser. When your site doesn't seem to be updated, even after publishing changes, it's likely a caching issue. Your browser is simply not getting the latest copy of the site files. Caching is every developer's arch-nemesis, even though it is every developer's best friend. Caching makes the web faster, even if it leads to the common advice of "try it in incognito mode." Slater has provided cache-busting functionality since early on, but it wasn't easy or intuitive. You had to manually update the We're excited to announce that we've just launched improvements to make production deployment more straightforward. With the new minification setting and improved caching, working in production should now be as easy as working in the staging environment! Javascript 101: All about caching Have you ever noticed how some websites load super fast when you visit them again? That's thanks to web caching! Caching provides a personal storage space on your computer or phone for website files. Here's how it works:
So why cache? Here are a few reasons:
But! Sometimes you might want to force your browser to ignore the cached files and load the latest version of a website. This is called "cache busting," and there are a few ways developers can do it:
Cache busting is useful when a website has been updated, and you want to ensure you're seeing the latest version without any old, cached files interfering. Go see if you can find cache busting in the wild and let us know what you find. Happy coding! - The Slater Team If Slater helps you create better websites, please support the team behind it.
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Slater resources, updates and community activity
How has your Webflow Conf 2024 experience been? At Edgar Allan, we are especially excited about Webflow Analyze and Optimize and how we can leverage it for our clients and with Wes. However, at Slater, we are most excited about the GSAP acquisition. We’ve been thinking about how we can better support you as you integrate GSAP and Webflow. Let’s explore how you can use Slater with GSAP: Slater Sessions - GSAP + Webflow via Chat with Witt Learn GSAP for Webflow with Aron Korenblit and Cassie...
Do you get confused when undoing (cmd + z) in Slater? We auto-format your code on save. The auto-formatting updates your code, and those updates get pushed into the undo stack. You can now improve your workflow by formatting the code when you choose—not just on save. To gain more control over when your code formats: Turn off auto-format code in the Code Editor Settings Use cmd + shift + f to format your code We added a handful of other improvements: Console logs and debuggers are now...
Last week, we announced that CSS updates were on the way—and now they're here! You can now generate CSS files just as quickly and easily as JS files. In the video below, we give a quick demo of the new functionality. If you have a Smart Script loaded in your project, you can instantly add CSS. In the demo, we also show how to add CSS in the Webflow designer. Give it a try and let us know what you're building! Community Library 🖍️ Text Highlight ColorCSS code for custom text selection. 🅰...