what is the best history cleaning add-on ?

[Lucio Chiappetti]

My browsing behaviour is that I keep the browser on for many and many days (if I have to close it or it crashes I use Session Manager addon to resume the old session). When closing, it cleans browsing history, cookies and cache. I occasionally clean cookies of particular sites manually. Form history should almost never be cleaned so I have Form History Control addon.

I'd strongly like that my browsing history keeps only the last 2 days, but occasionally I find that there are unwanted items indicated as "last 7 days" or "previous month" (and if I select "last 7 days" and delete it deletes ALSO "today" and "yesterday". Apparently (I just checked the archive of my old posts to the forum), since the number of days was taken out of about:config, I have been oscillating between "Expire history by days" and "Places cleaner". Is it correct that only one of them should be enabled ?

Lastly I had "Places cleaner", and, despite it was set to keep 2 days, I found those "last 7 days" and "August" unwanted stuff. Now I disabled it and I am reverting to "Expire history by days" ... let's see ...

[Nigaikaze]

Now I disabled it and I am reverting to "Expire history by days"

Expire history by days version 1.2.1 has been working nicely for me.

[billmcct]

+1 for Expire History by Days version 1.2.1. I only keep 2 days. Today and yesterday.

[fatboy]

What about setting your browser's history settings to clear when exit?

[Lucio Chiappetti]

If you'd read what I wrote above, it is already set to clear on exit ... and I exit very seldom,

[Lucio Chiappetti]

Hmm ... now I have Expire history by day enabled (with "expire visits older than 2 days" set in the preference, where it is the only item).
I also have Form History Control enabled. Will it interfere ?

What I'd like is that browsing history contains just 2 days. I found that it still contained more: "Today", "Yesterday" and "Last 7 days"

history.png (14.04 KiB) Viewed 761 times

. Unfortunately if I'd select "Last 7 days" and then delete, it is NOT exclusive (the last 7 days include also today and yesterday, so it would delete the entire history).

I found I could use shift-click to select all older entries and then do a mass deletion manually, but that is a bit inconvenient.

Yesterday I had a look into the extension xpi file and some XUL tutorials but could not make much of them.
I found instead a "sqlite3" client, and since I am quite conversant with mysql, I thought I could have a five-liner crontab script e.g. running and midnight and deleting from places.sqlite moz_places table all entries older than "2 days ago".
I am inclined to go that way (automatic, but outside of the browser). Is there any counter-indication against it ?

[billmcct]

Using "Expire History by Days version 1.2.1. I" I only have "Today and Yesterday" showing. Try disabling the other and restart PM to see if it is interfering.

screenshot.27.jpg (16.05 KiB) Viewed 727 times

[_yuyu_]

The best history clean add-on was HistoryDeleter. Strange, it does not work on x64 systems.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

Disabling Form History Control to verify it interferes with Expire History by Days won't be effective for two reasons. One is that it will require 3 days after restart to complete the test, and the other is that Form History Control is working and needed to interact with form history.
I have been so far trying the following procedure manually and it works so I am inclined to crontab it it if there are no objections in manual tampering of the places db.

Code: Select all

set t = `date --date='2 days ago' +%s`
set d = ${t}000000
sqlite3 places.sqlite  << END
 delete from moz_places where last_visit_date < $d ;
END    

Incidentally there is a feature in the default palemoon "Library viewer" (I suppose it goes back to old firefox) (see screenshots above), which is that the "Today" "Yesterday" and "Last 7 days" are inclusive and not exclusive: "Today"shows correctluy today's entries; "Yesterday" shows on top today's entries and then yesterday's until 24 hours from now (so it is "today plus yesterday" or "last 24 hours"; "Last 7 days" shows on top today's then yesterday's then all the rest (for instance now the oldest is 13:56 of 24/09 since I ran manually the above procedure about now.
I would have expected that "Today" be "today's date", "Yesterday" be "yesterday's date", "Last 7 days" be "from today-2 to today-7, etc. with mutually exclusive intervals.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

You should NEVER manually edit anything inside a user profile. Doing so may lead to corruption and send us down a rabbit's hole in trying to solve problems for you that you created your self. Ultimately, you will hurt support efforts for all users in the process.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

Well, thanks for the info in general. However for my education ...
... is it much different to edit "manually" vs edit within the browser using somebody's extension ? or editing about:config ?

... I would have been very glad to write an extension myself doing what I do, but I guess the learning curve will be rather long, while now I have a working solution which took me very short time to develop.

Anyhow, considering the authoritative reply, first of all (as it says entering about:config) "I promise to be careful" ; second I promise not to bother the forum or the developers for any problem which may derive from my script; third, if you think that the 5 lines of code I showed are instigation to misbehaviour, I authorize you (assuming you have forum administrator power) to remove them from my post, and to close and lock the thread.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Don't be over dramatic. Just these kinds of things are taking your life into your own hands so to speak. Don't worry so much.

[moonbat]

There's no harm in experimenting, but backup your profile first (while PM is closed) in case things go wrong.