The cache (pronounced "cash") is a space in your computer's hard drive and in RAM memory where your browser saves copies of recently-visited Web pages. Your browser uses the cache like a short-term memory. Instead of downloading an image from a recently viewed website, it will load the image from your cache folder, thereby making the browsing process a little quicker.

Netscape Navigator and Communicator for Windows have two kinds of caches: a disk cache and a memory cache. The memory cache is rarely problematic. When "cache" is mentioned on these pages, it refers to disk cache.

You can clear your cache (that is, delete all the files in your cache) if they begin to occupy too much hard drive space, or if the files get out of date and no longer correspond to the files on the Web server.

The default size of your disk cache is around 5000 kilobytes (or 5 MB). You can change the size of your cache. You can decrease the size of your cache if you need to free up space on your hard drive. You can increase it if you have a lot of free space available. A larger cache means that you can go back to more recently-visited pages more quickly.

• How do I clear my cache?
• How do I change the size of my cache?

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