319552 - would like to have a URL History Editor

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, enhancement)

Description

[Ken Yee]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5

I use the URL history as a MRU bookmarks list, but sometimes I want to be able to control what goes in there and what gets purged.

Here's an example:
I go to a fatwallet.com, click on the hot deals forum, then accidentally hit the Go button.  The URL history thinks I put this URL in there when I didn't, so it saves it.  I never type this URL in again, but it leaves it there because I visited the URL multiple times by clicking on my fatwallet.com URL history item, then clicking on the hot deals forum link.

The only choice currently is to purge all my URL history and re-enter everything.  Or convert those items to bookmark entries of course.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.go to a web site's root page
2.click on a forum area
3.click the go button
4.notice the forum area's URL is put in the URL history even though you didn't type it in
5.wait a few weeks (while still visiting site 1 and clicking through to the forum)
6.notice that the forum URL is still in the URL history

Actual Results:  
- extra URL history entries are not purged as expected
- extra URL history entries are entered when you don't expect them to be


Expected Results:  
- Go button stores URL that you browsed to when it should really store URLs that you typed in
- extra URL history entries should be purged if you don't visit them directly (if you click through and visit the URL, the history should purge it because you didn't go to it from the menu)

I'd like the Bookmarks editor to be able to be used to edit the URL history so we have full manual control over it.
Add a content menu entry to the Go button to let us edit the URL history.

Comment 1

[Jo Hermans]

So you want to keep the entries in the history list if you manually type them (never purge), but not if you visit them thru a link (purge after a rather short time) ?

I suggest that you read the following link for the new design that we're currently preparing :
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Browser_History
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Places
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Places:User_Interface

Comment 2

[Elmar Ludwig]

Maybe setting "browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped" to "true" in about:config will to what you want?

See also http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_:_FAQs_:_About:config_Entries

Comment 3

[Ken Yee]

I like the direction Places is going.  It's important that you let users be able to edit it though, so it acts more like a dynamic bookmarks hierarchy, or maybe blend it w/ bookmarks, so you can arrange the recent history URLs into bookmarks on the same page.

Turning on browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped doesn't help.  I'm talking about the pulldown combobox just to the left of the Go button (sorry...I should have mentioned this before).  I hope you guys aren't thinking that I'm talking about the drop down menus on the Back/Previous graphical buttons (I hardly ever use those)...

Comment 4

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

You should be able to shift-Delete the item in the dropdown.  Not the most discoverable solution, but I think that's what you're looking for.

Comment 5

[Ken Yee]

Thanks, Mike!
That's what I've been looking for :-)
It should be in a context menu though (or bring up some dialog where you can edit them).  Shift-Delete while your mouse is on an item in the pulldown isn't exactly intuitive ;-)

Comment 6

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

Ken, are your needs satisfied here? If so, I'd like to "WORKSFORME" this bug.

Comment 7

[Ken Yee]

Mike, yes, it works for me in Windows.  Unfortunately, it doesn't work in Linux.
It still would be nice if can manage this list to it sort of works like another bookmark list...

Comment 8

[Kevin Brosnan]

Since the time of Mike Connor's comment 4 removal of autocomplete entries has been changed to just the delete key. I think the break down is Firefox < 1.5 shift+delte and Firefox < 2 delete.

Comment 9

[Kevin Brosnan]

should have been ...Firefox => 2 delete.