559517 - With Remeber History for N days, the actual history is remembered for more than N days

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Private Browsing, defect)

Description

[andyk]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3

Firefox remembers visited URLs regardles of the number of days setup in Privacy - Remember my history for at least

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Lauch FF. 
2. Go to Preferences-Privacy, select Use custom settings for history
3. Set Remember my history for at least 15 days.
4. Close FF

Actual Results:  
In more 15 days (the number you entered in 3.), there're are still URLs which are stored in history for 20, 30 and more days.

In my case, there are urls a couple of months old

Expected Results:  
All urls that are older than specified days should be gone.


I use a FF3.6 Portable edition from Portableapps.com

Comment 1

[Mardeg]

(In reply to comment #0)
> Firefox remembers visited URLs regardles of the number of days setup in Privacy
> - Remember my history for at least
> Expected Results:  
> All urls that are older than specified days should be gone.

Sorry but the "at least" is accurate wording and is only there "To prevent culling old history entries prematurely" according to:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.history_expire_days_min

The about:config preference that does what you are expecting is covered at
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.history_expire_days

If no more clarification is needed, please resolve this bug as invalid.

Comment 2

[andyk]

Thank you so much for mentioning the correct section in the config!
Spent a week googling it to no avail, as the "at least" thing seemed disturbing.
:)

Closing now.

Comment 3

[andyk]

For those struggling to make FF delete history like it that should be,
a small instruction to save your time.

Launch FF, type in about:config in the address bar, go there, agree if anything pops out.

Type in "history" as the search parameter.

Change the following: 

browser.history_expire_days_min      = n
browser.history_expire_days.mirror   = n
browser.history_expire_days          = n+1

where n is the desired days to keep history, and n+1 is one day greater.
This tells FF to keep all for n days, but delete everything that is 1 day larger.

Restart FF.

Did the trick for me.

Comment 4

[windward400-5]

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 5

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

Sure, feel free to file an enhancement bug in Toolkit::Data Sanitization but, to manage expectations, it's not realistic that this would get added in the near future.

Thanks!