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Is there a way to define a specific amount of days to keep history?

Posted: 2016-03-04, 21:08
by fusion01
I like the way Internet explorer will allow history for a user set amount of days before it is deleted. It seems on Palemoon it is all or none. Is there a way to have it keep history for say 7 days before it deletes it?

Re: Is there a way to define a specific amount of days to keep history?

Posted: 2016-03-04, 21:10
by New Tobin Paradigm
History was changed some time ago to be database driven.. as such there is no true way of doing this anymore.. But there is an extension that closely emulates the behavior of having an x amount of days of history.. Search AMO..

Re: Is there a way to define a specific amount of days to keep history?

Posted: 2016-03-04, 21:16
by fusion01
I searched and don't see anything referring to AMO regarding history settings when I searched this forum. Can you be a little more specific please? Thanks.

Re: Is there a way to define a specific amount of days to keep history?

Posted: 2016-03-04, 21:26
by eskaton

Re: Is there a way to define a specific amount of days to keep history?

Posted: 2016-03-04, 21:36
by fusion01
Thanks I see that there are tons on add-ons for FF (do these work for Palemoon though) and I searched specifically for AMO and zip zilch nada. What is AMO? I don't want to have to haphazardly start installing random history add-ons just to find one that will do 7 days before clearing history. For example will the History Janitor do what I want?

Re: Is there a way to define a specific amount of days to keep history?

Posted: 2016-03-04, 21:40
by Nigaikaze
The extension I use for this is Expire History By Days. The latest version is not compatible with Pale Moon but the older version 1.1.1 works just fine for me.
fusion01 wrote:What is AMO?
The addons.mozilla.org site.

Re: Is there a way to define a specific amount of days to keep history?

Posted: 2016-03-04, 21:44
by fusion01
Thanks Nigaikaize, looks like this will work out just fine! Should I set it to not update so it will continue to work?

Re: Is there a way to define a specific amount of days to keep history?

Posted: 2016-03-04, 21:48
by Nigaikaze
No, you don't need to set it to not update. Pale Moon reports it's "Firefox" version to AMO as 24.9, so extensions will not be updated unless they explicitly support that version of Firefox. Since the minimum version of Firefox for subsequent versions of that extension is 38, the newer non-compatible versions will not automatically be pushed down to Pale Moon. I've had version 1.1.1 of this extension running on several PCs without disabling auto-updates, and all of them are still at 1.1.1.

Edit: Sorry, forgot to say "You're welcome!" Bad manners on my part. Sorry about that, Chief.

Re: Is there a way to define a specific amount of days to keep history?

Posted: 2016-03-04, 21:54
by fusion01
Thanks Nigaikaze, will it hurt to have it disabled though as that's the setting I have it at right now. Also you as well as someone else on this forum mentioned the word AMO. What does this mean? Is this Palemoon lingo for FF extensions or something?

Re: Is there a way to define a specific amount of days to keep history?

Posted: 2016-03-04, 21:58
by Nigaikaze
No it won't hurt to have it disabled.

As I replied above:
Nigaikaze wrote:
fusion01 wrote:What is AMO?
The addons.mozilla.org site.
Edit: For clarification, yes it is the main Mozilla website that hosts addons for Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, etc.

Re: Is there a way to define a specific amount of days to keep history?

Posted: 2016-03-04, 22:00
by fusion01
ok thanks, I wasn't familiar with the AMO acronym.

Re: Is there a way to define a specific amount of days to keep history?

Posted: 2016-03-04, 22:02
by Nigaikaze
You're welcome. Yeah, that takes a li'l getting used to 'round here. AMO = addons.mozilla.org, and BMO = bugzilla.mozilla.org (for tracking Firefox etc. bugs). I think those are the two big *MO acronyms you'll see. I don't remember any others off the top of my head. :)

Re: Is there a way to define a specific amount of days to keep history?

Posted: 2016-03-04, 22:03
by fusion01
Nigaikaze, I am testing the add-on but I am noticing even after opening and closing Palemoon down, there is nothing showing in the history at all. On the Palemoon settings I have custom history setting but the only thing it is deleting is cache everytime I shut down Palemoon. Why am I not seeing ANY history with the setting in the extention set to 7 days?

Re: Is there a way to define a specific amount of days to keep history?

Posted: 2016-03-04, 22:14
by Nigaikaze
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ... that seems odd. I'm not an expert on that extension, but I've set it for 30, 45 and 90 days at different times in the past and it's always appeared to work as expected. I'll have to try setting it to 7 days myself and play around with it to see if I can replicate what you're experiencing.

Re: Is there a way to define a specific amount of days to keep history?

Posted: 2016-03-04, 22:20
by fusion01
I now have it disabled (by setting day to zero) and I have Palemoons settings to not delete anything when closing and history is still blank. I did copy over my other Palemoon Default folder contents to the new Palmoon default folder I just installed on my USB drive so maybe it's something from that folder that is buggered? Before I copied everything over I noticed history was working as normal on my new USB drive Portable version. Is there a folder or file within the default folder that stores history that I can clear out to start it anew?

Re: Is there a way to define a specific amount of days to keep history?

Posted: 2016-03-04, 23:41
by Nigaikaze
fusion01 wrote:Is there a folder or file within the default folder that stores history that I can clear out to start it anew?
Well ... history is stored in the places.sqlite file ... but IIRC that file includes a few other things in addition to history. I would recommend renaming it (to perhaps places.sqlite.old or similar) rather than deleting it outright, just so you have a copy in case you need to fall back to it.

Another option would be to try a brand new portable installation with a new clean profile and no other extensions/addons installed, just to see if that makes any difference. That would rule out both profile corruption and potential interference from other extensions.

Re: Is there a way to define a specific amount of days to keep history?

Posted: 2016-03-05, 02:03
by fusion01
Yeah when I posted before I had mentioned when it was newly installed the history worked fine UNTIL I added the contents of the default folder to bring over my bookmarks and settings from another Palemoon portable x64 that was my mostly used browser that was setup right on my hard drive. So how woyuld I add over all the settings from the old Palemoon browser to the new version without getting this history anomoly?

Re: Is there a way to define a specific amount of days to keep history?

Posted: 2016-03-05, 02:35
by fusion01
I tried another brand new portable version and the history works, and I copied the contents of default folder but saved the places.sqlite file and then history worked and that was ok but my bookmarks and settings were gone. So how can I get all my bookmarks and settings from the old places.sqlite file that I'm assuming now is corrupt?

Re: Is there a way to define a specific amount of days to keep history?

Posted: 2016-03-05, 07:51
by fusion01
nigaikaze I have a question about the Expire History by Days 1.1.1 ad on. On a different laptop that I have palemoon portable where I have a history spanning back to February, I added the Expire History by Days ad-on and set it to 7 days and opened and closed the browser several times but all the old history items from February are still there. When does this actually delete the old items?

Re: Is there a way to define a specific amount of days to keep history?

Posted: 2016-03-05, 17:54
by Nigaikaze
fusion01 wrote:When does this actually delete the old items?
As per the extension's description on AMO:
Expiration happens on idle, but it's not instant.
It happens in the background when the browser is open and idle. Fire up Pale Moon, set the option for the number of days you want, then let it sit for a bit whilst you go do something else. It will eventually trim the history down to the number of days that you've set, but not instantaneously.