A few recent posts have mentioned deleting the cache history. What are the pros and cons of doing this?

Page content held in the cache will be displayed much more quickly by the browser. If there was no cache, every image, icon, animation etc would have to be downloaded each time FunTrivia (for instance) was visited. This would increase page loading times quite a bit. Not only that, it would put up the site's bandwidth usage and cause unneceassary data flow across the Internet. So I think it benefits all to keep a cache for a while.

I say for a while because a cache can become too large (often referred to as 'bloated'). As well as the page content from regularly visited sites, it will fill up with content from sites only visited once. This is just dead weight really as you may never require the browser to display this content again. Some web pages consist of many images and/or animations. Many of these have a fair file size, all of which help to fill the cache.

The more bloated a cache becomes, the longer a browser might take to find content within it. Also, a browser can make mistakes or suffer some strange effects when the cache is too full. If there is ever any trouble with the browser not displaying page content properly (or image saving problems) a good first move is to empty the cache.

So, while there is a good case for keeping a cache, there is also one for emptying it from time to time. How often would depend on your browsing.

I think that's about it as I see it