Web browsers have been broken ever since their invention. There is a fatal flaw in every single web browser I’ve ever used, and I bet you’ve come across this flaw without realizing how serious it is. Sure, you may have felt some frustration, but it was likely undirected and you were unsure why you were angry (well, this is how I’ve felt over the years, anyway).
I’ve drawn a very simple diagram to explain how I browse the web:
The idea in the diagram is this: We start at page A and then visit the second page, B. From there, we go back to A (likely by hitting the back button) and then visit another link called C. From C, we will visit D. In our web browser’s history, this web browsing session is A -> C -> D. If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice that we are completely missing B from our browsing history. Don’t believe me? Try it. I should clarify that when I refer to the browser’s “history”, I am referring to what is generally a drop down menu coming from the back button. Opera, Firefox and Internet Explorer all behave this way.
Before the days of tabbed browsing, this type of behavior would drive me crazy. It is absurd that a browser would willingly forget massive history lists, when surely the user would intuitively assume that all pages they’ve visited in the past would be listed in the “back” button’s list. Of course, with today’s browsers, I virtually never run into this problem since I open nearly everything in a new tab. However, I’m occasionally still forced to use Internet Explorer 6, which suffers from having no tabbed browsing and no decent history list.
Why do no browsers portray the history as a tree, such as the one I’ve drawn above? Is it too hard to design a user interface that works well, or is there another reason? If anyone knows of a small, nearly-unheard-of browser that does actually represent browser history as a tree, I would love to know about it!
Chris Adams | 12-May-08 at 7:47 pm | Permalink
IIRC, the webmap feature in IBM’s Web Explorer was close to what you’re asking for: a dynamically-generated unordered list of your browsing history. Unfortunately, it never made it off of OS/2.
Dorai Thodla | 12-May-08 at 8:02 pm | Permalink
This can actually be done as an extension to existing browsers. No need for a new browser. I often use browser history. This view should be just an option.
An alternate simple view implemented in many portals (like Plone and Drupal) is to provide breadcrumbs ( a tree collapsed into one line display).
alurie | 12-May-08 at 8:10 pm | Permalink
You could probably implement this yourself as a firefox extension. OR someone else could. The hard part would be figuring out what way you want to display the tree.
Stephen Deken | 12-May-08 at 8:20 pm | Permalink
Tabbed browsing makes this even more egregious: my browsing history usually looks like A(BC)(DE), where (BC) are simultaneous, and (DE) are simultaneous.
Nemo | 12-May-08 at 8:42 pm | Permalink
Your request is neither new…
http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/04/03/31/0513245.shtml?tid=126&tid=185&tid=95
Nor is the solution unknown
http://www.w3.org/Conferences/WWW4/Papers2/270/
And there are even still people who remember MosaicG and want equivelant implemented…
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=652629
That we still don’t have it just shows how the lowest common demoninator can still win out. The basic history we have is seen as “good enough”
…/Nemo
Josh | 12-May-08 at 9:02 pm | Permalink
iRider does this – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRider. It uses the left toolbar to show a nested list of previews of all pages you are viewing. Ad you open a new link it gets added to the list, and you can jump to any page by simply clicking on it. It blurs the lines between tabs and history. It’s a little dated though, and uses IE for rendering.
Norman Solomon | 28-Jul-09 at 4:31 am | Permalink
I have just submitted a Firefox add-on called History Tree that solves this problem. You can install it from Mozilla’s official add-on site at;
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/13316/
A quick-start History Tree tutorial is also available at
http://normansolomon.org.uk/histTreeHelp/tutorial.html