Exercise 2: Demonstrating the Cache-Busting Gap — Possible Solution ==================================================================== STEP 1 — THE STALE CACHE ------------------------------ 1. Load the site once in a browser, with global.css setting background: #0f1117. 2. Change global.css's own background to a different color, e.g. #1a1a2e, and save the file - the server needs no restart, since express.static() reads the file fresh on request, but the browser's own cache is what's actually at issue here. 3. Reload the page with an ordinary refresh (not a hard/forced reload). Depending on the browser's own caching headers and behavior, the page may still show the old #0f1117 background, since the URL /css/global.css never changed and the browser sees no reason to treat it as a new resource. STEP 2 — THE MANUAL FIX ------------------------------ Bumping the query string forces the browser to treat this as a genuinely new URL, guaranteeing a fresh fetch regardless of any cached copy of the un-versioned URL. WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER ------------------------------ It correctly demonstrates the real risk of a stale cached stylesheet persisting after a real change, and correctly shows the manual query-string bump as the only fix available, since express.static() provides no automatic cache-busting mechanism of its own.