238215 - Add a history window (like in Seamonkey)

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, enhancement)

Description

[Dan Mellem]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040316
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040206 Firefox/0.8

There needs to be a way to open sidebar resources, such as the history and
bookmarks, in their own window. It's more convenient to have a single history
window that doesn't take up screen real estate than having to open the history
in whichever window I'm currently browsing. I like the CTRL-B and CTRL-H
features of Mozilla and would like that carried over. I know bug 178199
discusses CTRL-B (WONTFIX but perhaps CTRL-SHIFT-B) in particular but I'm
talking about depending on the side bar at all. I really hate sidebars and would
want to be able to disable them in place of these windows before I would migrate
to Firefox.

Since the roadmap is now to focus on the standalone apps with "a conservative,
sustaining engineering fashion" type of support for Mozilla/SeaMonkey, I think a
"SeaMonkey Parity" of some form should be established.

Thanks.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Jesse Ruderman]

A bookmark manager window already exists, and bug 178199 covers giving it a
better keyboard shortcut than Alt,B,M.

I don't see a bug for adding a history window.

Comment 2

[miahz]

how about something like about:history?
similar to about:config - just a full page tree with a search/filter field at
the top.  you wouldn't really need a menu or toolbar buttons like with the
bookmarks manager.  but like the bm and unlike the sidebar, it would have all
the sortable columns: name, url, last visited, first visited, number of visits, etc.

it would be the "power-user" supplement to the simple history sidebar.  sure,
the sidebar needs a few things fixed like searching urls, but other than that, i
think it's fine for most uses - exactly what sidebars are for - a quick way to
access something without leaving/obscuring the current page.  and an
about:history page would nicely fill in the gap left on the advanced end.  a
whole new history window is probably overkill, and a page could just as easily
be opened in its own window or in a tab.  while i'm brainstorming, you could
probably even add a search shortcut ability so you could type something like
about:history?extensions to open the history page and filter pages with
"extensions."

compare:
chrome://browser/content/history/history-panel.xul
chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksPanel.xul
chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul
about:config

reporter,
not sure if you're asking for a whole new history window, or just the ability to
open the sidebar history in its own window.  if the latter is the case, then
just open the above chrome url in a new window.

the component and other fields probably need to be updated.

Comment 3

[Dan Mellem]

I'm really looking for two things:

1. A separate window so I can keep going back to the same window and open
multiple windows from this window.
chrome://browser/content/history/history-panel.xul would meet this need.

2. Being able to see and sort the history. Seamonkey offers tabs for Title,
Location, Last Visited, First Visited, Hostname, Referrer, and Visit Count. Not
all of this is needed but at least the first four are helpful.

Plus, I'd like to be able to open this easily, such as with ^H.

Comment 4

[u167265]

Please add the Mozilla history window in Firefox! I think this is just one of
the things that's missing in inferior browsers like Microsoft Internet Explorer.
The Mozilla history window is just perfect!

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to comment #3)
> I'm really looking for two things:
> 
> 1. A separate window so I can keep going back to the same window and open
> multiple windows from this window.
> chrome://browser/content/history/history-panel.xul would meet this need.
> 
> 2. Being able to see and sort the history. Seamonkey offers tabs for Title,
> Location, Last Visited, First Visited, Hostname, Referrer, and Visit Count. Not
> all of this is needed but at least the first four are helpful.


Firefox sure doesn't seem like a total product with a decent history.  EHM,
Enhanced History Manager, is an extension that does it nicely.

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=1749502#1749502

Comment 6

[seren]

 I agree that the firefox history is limited at best. I'm amazed that there is no way of knowing what the url or date of a history entry is. Mozilla history was excellent since you could re-trace your browsing using the timestamp and find collections of pages you'd visited.

 History (in life and browsing) is more useful when there is a context. Shouldn't there be an option to see when and what order a page was visited?