1376802 - Preferences for configuring the maximum days of history to keep

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Toolkit :: Places, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Hector Zhao [:hectorz]]

Beijing office ships such a preference with an extension, and defaults to keep history for a max of 90 days. We think this should help keeping the size of the places db relatively small and reduce its impact on Firefox's performance.

It seems we won't be able to keep this with the new WebExtensions API, please consider taking this into vanilla Firefox, since users outside China may also benefit from it. Thanks.

Comment 1

[Marco Bonardo [:mak] (Away Apr 25 - May 5)]

How do you do that and why do you feel the need to?
We removed that option years ago and we currently limit history based on some other heuristics. We didn't notice particular perf issues with the default settings.

Comment 2

[Hector Zhao [:hectorz]]

(In reply to Andy McKay [:andym] from bug 1331559 comment #2)
> Based on a meeting with Hector, this is no longer needed and can now be done
> from a WebExtension. Please re-open Hector if I have that wrong.

Should be this bug.

We'll implement something like this with current available WebExtension API.

Comment 3

[windward400-5]

Marco, I am desperate to see this feature in Firefox.

Firefox preferences offer an all-or-nothing setting for history: "remember forever" or "don't remember at all". Most users stick with the default of remember forever.

After a few months of using Firefox, history list starts to become unwieldy and starts causing problems in browsing and search experience. Here is an illustrative example: I once mistyped a website URL for a site that I love. Now every single time I try to visit my favorite website, the typographical error fake website keeps showing up as top suggestion in the search bar.

Second, typing any keyword in the browser bar shows history links that I visited months ago and bear little relevance to my purpose today.

I understand there are hidden preferences and tricks around this, but perhaps it is time to revisit and reconsider reporter's bug request. Life would be much simpler to have a simple setting of "Remember history for N days".

Comment 4

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Please do not spam multiple bugs with the same comment.