Why won't Safari display altered uploaded files?

Your ISP may be serving you files from its "cache" instead of the new page. Very common even on high speed connections.
You can sometimes "force" a fresh page by adding a ? mark to the end of the URL in the address bar.

Since the .css file is "called" when the page (.html) file is loaded you should get new content by adding the? mark to the URL.
No way for any ISP to load individual page elements (one from a cache and another from the page code) that I'm aware of.
Use the Safari "Activity Window" to view the contents of any loaded page element and compare to "older" versions.

Safari can most definitely render CSS padding styles, so the problem is something more complicated than just that.

For what it's worth, in my daily web design work I normally check the pages first in Safari, then in other browsers. I've never had a problem with Safari not loading new .css files (over and over again, for hours every day) so the caching problem is also more complicated than just being a Safari fault...

Especially odd that I can see the changes in GoLive or BBedit (as previews), but not in Safari (as a preview).

Ah, but when previewing in GoLive and BBEdit, they're loading the files on your +hard drive+. So that's not surprising at all.

But yes, I agree that Firefox getting different results viewing the files online is puzzling. All I can think of is that there's some odd interaction going on between the way Firefox sees a cached file your ISP is feeding you (perhaps knowing it's cached and refreshing it?) and the way Safari sees a cached file. (That's really a shot in the dark... just all I can think of.)

More a testing idea than anything else: Try changing and uploading the CSS file, see if when first loaded in Safari (the actual CSS file online, not the one on your hard drive and not the HTML file) you see the old version, and then refresh to see if you then see the new version. Then try reloading the page that uses that CSS file.

Message was edited by: Rachel R

You confused me a little here. Earlier you wrote:

t I can see the changes in GoLive or BBedit (as previews)

but then you say:

That I am also previewing the file in Safari and also loading from my hard disk at that time. So that suggests to me, since Safari does not render it right

Are you seeing changes made to CSS files when previewing in Safari ... or not? I might have read something wrong, but I had the impression you were saying previews in Safari show CSS changes, while previews online do not.

Also, I think there are two things happening and one is confusing the matter. Earlier you wrote:

But when previewed in Safari, it is not the same — the padding is gone.

My feeling was that this was a separate issue, not a problem with caching. (To my knowledge and in my experience, Safari never uses cached files when viewing files on the hard drive.) My thought was that this is a CSS conflict or syntax problem.

Test for the caching issue (in previews vs. online) with something obvious, rather than your padding style... something like a red border or a text style, so you'll be sure if it's there or not.

Message was heavily edited by: Rachel R 😉

This still makes me think the problem has two facets. That is, it appears to be caused by (1) an ISP (or router?) caching problem, exacerbated by (2) a problem in the way Safari deals with cached files fed to it over a network, not recognizing that they're cached and therefore not forcing a refresh.

I'm at a loss beyond that, though. Does anyone know what would cause this and, even better, what the solution might be?

There have been other cases in which Safari and other Apple apps interact differently with a network than third-party apps. This is reminiscent of a problem that occurs occasionally when the system spontaneously adds proxy settings to the Network preferences, resulting in Apple apps being unable to make connections to some web pages while third-party apps are unaffected.

In fact, it can't hurt to check for that. Go to System Preferences and click on Network. If necessary click on your current connection (e.g. Airport, Ethernet, etc.) and click "Configure." Click the Proxies tab. Are there any settings checked in the proxy server list? If any proxy settings have appeared that you don't know you need for your connection, remove them, click "Apply Now," and close the preferences window. You may need to quit/relaunch Safari and even restart the Mac for the changes to fully take effect.

That's a long shot, but a possibility nonetheless....

There were none checked and the "Configure proxies" is set at "manual" and the "Use passive FTP mode (PASV)" is checked. Otherwise all rest unchecked.

That's as it should be, so there's no problem there.

I think it must be as you suggest about Apple Aps. I know there are some bank web pages I go to that I cannot use Safari with and have to resort to Firefox

That's a bit different. That's the result of programming by the bank web sites, some of which actively block all but the two or three browsers they "support," some just having bad coding that doesn't work in any but a few browsers.

But regardless, I'm stumped on this problem. It's not something I've experienced in my full time web work. I think there has to be an ISP or router caching component (most likely the former), but obviously it doesn't affect other browsers, and I don't know why.