firefox – I know I saw that web page!

I can’t find that page!  I know I saw it yesterday evening, but where did it go?

This was the question I posed to Scott earlier today.  After telling him what I wanted to blog about, I said that I just needed to find the web page that had the information.

Firefox history

I was aware that I could use the “search bookmarks and history” feature to look at all the webpages I had been to recently.  I tried narrowing it down to Oracle.com pages but could not find the page that I had seen last night.

Scott told me that I could view my browser history by time.  Perfect!  I know I saw it last night and I didn’t go to that many pages then.

I just went to History > Show all history.  It lets you filter by today, yesterday, the last 6 months and older than 6 months.  I chose “yesterday”, sorted by time and found the page.  It was a java.sun.com page which explains why Oracle.com pages didn’t find it!

When it doesn’t work

This “feature” is a bit creepy.  What if you don’t want your history around for so long.

  • When in “private browsing” mode, your history is not stored
  • If you’ve cleared your browser’s history, it is not in the list
  • If you’ve gone into the history and right clicked “delete”, that item is not in the list
  • If you’ve gone into the history and right clicked “forget about this site”, no items from that domain are in the list.

If you are like me and nobody else has access to your computer, this is an awesome feature though!  I certainly wouldn’t have remembered where I saw that information.

As to what that topic I actually wanted to blog about was – you’ll have to check back tomorrow.  Hint – it’s about Java certifications.