Back/Forward history

[beastie1]

Two nice additions I'd like to see in the back and forward toolbar icons:

• right-clicking should do the same as left-clicking and holding: it should display the list, but instantaneously instead of having to wait for 1 sec or so.
• a "Clear" menu item, like the one in the "Closed Tabs" menu, to clear the tab's history.

What do you think?

Thank you!

[Emdek]

1. Right click should be reserved for equivalent of "Customize" menu, mixing it in as does Opera would look ugly... Maybe there could be better solution.
2. Placing it directly there is bad idea, it would be too easy to trigger it accidentally. But it could be useful as action to be triggered by shortcut or to be placed in some context menu (Customizable context menus (JSON file) #65).

[beastie1]

Placing it directly there is bad idea, it would be too easy to trigger it accidentally.

Well, it could be placed at the bottom of the menu, thus decreasing the chances it gets clicked accidentally. And/Or, there could be a (optional) confirm message.
In fact this could be done for the "Closed Tabs" menu as well.

Customizable menus would of course considerably improve usability.

[Emdek]

@beastie1, the point is that such action is not so much useful to be placed there.
Ability to put it into context menu of current tab (for tab bar or window itself) should be enough.

[Cqoicebordel]

I think it's the right place to put it, and innovative :

• No other browser does it here
• What do you want to do : suppress what's behind this left/right arrow. It make sense for a muggle (a non technically skilled person) to seek this functionnality here.

I would like also to add a functionnality for the back/forward list : middle clicking on an item on those list should clone the tab at the state clicked in the background.

[Emdek]

@Cqoicebordel, but how many people need such feature? :-)
And for what purposes?
There is also option to limit amount of these entries globally:
History/BrowsingLimitAmountWindow

Cloning is doable, it's just standard cloning followed by setting history to specified index.
I like that idea. :-)

[Cqoicebordel]

The point is feature discoverability. If you want to erase your tracks, you go where you can see your tracks, in the "back" menu. You don't go to settings->privacy->.... etc.
Opera does something like that in the recently closed tab menu, where you can also erase the list.

Glad you like it :o)

[Emdek]

@Cqoicebordel, sure, but proper workflow is to use private tab and then simply close it.

[Cqoicebordel]

Sure, but sometimes, you start browsing a wikipedia page, and a few minutes later, you end up somewhere your spouse shouldn't know about. Or the other way around ;o)
You can't say there are right and wrong workflow, there are only different usage of the same product.

Anyway. I think it could be modified in the future by skin makers.

[Emdek]

@Cqoicebordel, sure, but that part is less important than entries in global history. ;-)
Maybe another approach would be better, like adding option to clear session history in "Clear History" dialog?

Or clear button shown for each entry in that menu (it would take more time to clear longer list but allow more precise cleaning)?
That would a bit harder since we would need to store identifier from global history (or maybe we need option to decide if entry should be removed from there too?) and identify items in different way in (right now they use simple indexes, starting from 0).

Another idea, add action allowing to erase any traces about specified tab (like "Forget History"), it would clear it's entries from global history and wouldn't add it to recently closed tabs menu (this one could also make use of that clear button for each entry).

[Cqoicebordel]

When I delete the history from a tab, I would expect it to be deleted from global history too.

I like that idea of "Close and forget history". It allow both workflows, pre-forget (private tab) and post-forget. Could be optionnal.

To be able to suppress each item is essential I think. But maybe not with a button, it seems to me it would add clutter.
Maybe only with the delete key, like it was in the url bar ?

Why not using the indexes of the global history for the history of the tab ? It would be much easier to code that way. Or I didn't understood what you said...

[Emdek]

@Cqoicebordel, tab history is totally separate from global history.
These delete buttons would shown only when hovering entry, like "x" in pop-up of address field (history).

[Cqoicebordel]

IMHO, tab history should only be a stack of global history indexes, shouldn't be totally separated. It would allow much easier coding of what we were discussing. But maybe you don't have the possibility, or there are some other reasons that's not possible.

Sound good to me for the delete buttons.

[Emdek]

@Cqoicebordel, there are reasons to keep it as is, tab history can work when global history is disabled, is available for private tabs (these don't have entries in global history), will still work after copying session file to another instance and isn't affected by global history limits (so it won't disappear when older global history entries will be automatically removed).
It's not hard to extend tab history to keep references to global entries, the issue is that tab history entries do not have unique identifiers, they are simply a list. I'll have to do some testing to check if there will be no side effects due to limitations of QWebHistory.

[Cqoicebordel]

Hum... didn't think of all that.
Anyway, it's a small issue, low priority etc., and you're the boss ;o)

[szcsaba]

+1 for "action allowing to erase any traces about specified tab (like "Forget History")", because (as you wrote) this could delete entries from global history.

[ersi-dnd]

@szcsaba maybe a better name is "erase tab history"

[Emdek]

Adding custom button per menu item appears to be a bit too complicated (unless we don't care for MacOS X...), so I guess that I'll try with Delete key (remove entry) and Shift+Delete (purge entry - remove also global entry, if possible).
Maybe also some context menu (yeah, menus can have context menus, an we even already use that for bookmarks ;-)).