Section 11.4. History List: All Versions | Windows Vista: The Missing Manual

11.4. History List: All Versions

This history is a list of the Web sites you've visited. It's the heart of three IE features: AutoComplete, described at the beginning of this chapter; the drop-down list at the right side of the Address bar; and the History list itself.

That's the pane that appears when you click the Favorites (star) button and then click Historyor just press Ctrl+H. Figure 11-8 presents the world's shortest History class.

Figure 11-8. If you click the little button next to the word History, you'll see that you can view the list sorted by Web site, date, frequency of visitsor you can see only the sites you've visited today, in order. The same little pop-up menu offers a command called Search History, so that you can search for text in the History listnot the actual text on those pages, but text within the page addresses and descriptions .

The History pane lists the Web sites you've visited in the last week or so, neatly organized into subfolders like "Today" and "Last Week." These are great features if you can't recall the URL for a Web site that you remember having visited recently.

Click one of the time-period icons to see the Web sites you visited during that era. Click the name of a Web site to view a list of each visited page within that siteand click an actual URL to reopen that Web page in the main window.

You can configure the number of days for which you want your Web visits tracked. To do so, choose Tools Internet Options General; where it says "Browsing history," click Settings. At the bottom of the dialog box, youll see the "Days to keep pages in history" control.

For details on erasing your History list for security purposes, see page 352.

Tip: The more days IE tracks, the easier it is for you to refer to those addresses quickly. On the other hand, the more days you keep, the longer the list becomes, which may make it harder to use the list easily and efficiently .Oh, and if you set "Days to keep pages in history" to 0, Internet Explorer won't track your movements at all. (You know who you are.)