Issues using MathJax 2.5 with Chrome

So yesterday I wrote an article about the conditional support of MathJax in my posts here on the blog. The post required MathJax since I deliberately put an equation in it. Today I noticed that viewing that post in Chrome led to the equation being rendered three times across the page:

Chrome displays three equations. Whut?

Even refreshing the page didn’t solve the issue. A mild bit of panic later – Does it work in FireFox? Yes. In Internet Explorer? Yes. In Safari on the Mac? Yes. On an iPad? Yes. – it was time for a bit more research.

It turns out that MathJax was updated to v2.5 on January 30, 2015 and I’d coded the <script> element to download the latest version:

<script src="http://cdn.mathjax.org/mathjax/latest/MathJax.js?config=TeX-AMS-MML_HTMLorMML"></script>

And there in the PR report about it was the hint:

If you are using the mathjax/latest address you might get a mixture of files in your browser cache, and so may need to clear your browser cache and for some browsers (e.g., Chrome) restart your browser in order to get a consistent version of all files.

I opened Chrome’s History page, clicked the Clear browsing data… button, made sure the Cached images and files option was checked, and cleared the browsing data. I restarted Chrome and everything worked as it should have.

Phew! Saved, at least until the next time…

  Loading links to posts on similar topics...