History in the context of this article means a record of the web pages you’ve visited in the past that the browser stores. Unless you’ve changed it, the default setting for how long a browser keeps a history of sites you’ve visited is either 20, 30, 90 days or forever depending on which browser you use.

Why should you use the History feature?

Example 1: Let’s say you visit a particular web site on Monday, then go back to it Tuesday. You know you have to do something on that site but absolutely cannot remember what that something was. Viewing the History will show what time of the day you visited that particular site. You can then ask yourself, "What was I doing at that time of day yesterday?" That should be enough to trigger your memory to remember why you had to go back to that site in the first place.

Example 2: You went to this really cool web site a few days ago but forgot to bookmark it. You tell a friend about the site and he or she wants the link, but darned if you can remember what the address was or even the title. Use the History feature to find it.

IE8 vs. Firefox 3.6 vs. Chrome 7

On the Windows platform, one keystroke accesses the History feature: CTRL+H. No matter which browser you’re using, that’s the keystroke. It’s nice because H is for History, so it’s easy to remember. The fact it’s the same keystroke across all three browsers is also a very good thing.

BEST: Firefox

Firefox’s History feature is the best you can use. Tree-style menus on the left make it easy expand/contract specific days or a set of days, and the accompanying View menu gives you even more options.

ADEQUATE: IE8

(I’m showing IE9 beta here but it’s the same as IE8)

IE8/9′s way of handling history is roughly the same as Firefox, but the way it’s done is typical Microsoft wonky-menu-extreme. First of all, the search feature is a menu choice when you click the drop-down (where you see "View By Date" in the screen shot above). Secondly, IE’s history includes local file navigation along with web sites you’ve been to. This is something you’re either going to love or hate. I hate it.

Points are scored however by having a direct "Add to favorites.." link directly in the History box. To do the same in Firefox requires a right-click/Bookmark for its History.

WORST: Chrome

The way Chrome does History is awful for a number of reasons.

1. No expand/contract menus. You have nothing but one huge honkin’ list.

2. There is no setting anywhere in Chrome to set the number of days the browser keeps history. Maybe this will be a feature in Chrome 8, but in 7 it simply keeps history forever. Your only option to remove X amount of history data is to click the Edit Items link at right, then click Clear all browsing data… button, then manually choose Clear browsing history as the only thing checked, then choose Last 4 weeks from the drop-down, then click Clear browsing data button and you’re finally done.

That’s ridiculous. There should be an option within "Under the Hood"/Content Settings where you can simply tell the browser to only keep X day’s worth of history.

Again, maybe this will appear in Chrome 8. Hopefully it will because this is a very basic feature we’re talking about here.

3. While it’s nice the "favicon" is shown (if available) for each site you visited, you’re going to be doing massive amounts of scrolling. For example, let’s say you’re half-way a page of history and want to search. Scroll up. All the way up. The search box is there and nowhere else.

The only real advantages to the way Chrome does history is that it is easy to manually remove specific items by checking boxes, and that since History is in fact a web page it will obey CTRL-plus/CTRL-minus for text size. Otherwise Firefox and IE blow it out of the water completely.

If you want History like Firefox or IE does it, you’ll probably need an extension or two.

I don’t want to say Chrome’s History doesn’t work, because it does and you can access the information you need to. The problem is it just takes twice or three times as long to find what you want compared to Firefox or IE, and it shouldn’t.

Something I wish all three browsers would do but don’t

Show a last-accessed time and date in the address bar directly for History results.

Almost everybody uses the address bar to keyword-search stuff they’ve visited before based on their browser history; that’s par for the course.

Wouldn’t it be great if on the far right of the bar it showed the last-access time/date for each History result on the drop-down? How cool would that be?

Until that happens, if it ever does, we’ll have to use the History feature instead.

Note to IE, Firefox and Chrome devs: All you guys and gals really need to integrate better History options into the address bar directly. You all place so much emphasis on it but don’t give us the date/time of when/where we visited stuff.

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