Because there is so much choice, most of us will use more than one web browser to browse the internet these days. The problem comes with them all being rather different in the way they store their data files like favourites, login details and what websites you have visited. Using multiple browsers probably also means that the places you visit will be different on each of them, so if you want to remember that useful site and didn’t bookmark it, going back through each browsers history can be a bit of a pain.
One of the ways to get round this is to use a program to do it for you, and there is a new little utility from SecurityXploded called Browser History Spy, initially released on 29th March, which will show you the website history from the three most popular browsers around at the moment; Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. The experimental Google Chrome Canary builds are also supported.
The program actually has a portable version and the installable setup in the same zip file which is nice because it gives you the choice, and we all love choice. Simply start the program and you’re ready to go. Like with all of their software, SecurityXploded don’t do boring interfaces, and this one is no exception, good looking, clean and simple.
When you go to the Firefox or Chrome tabs, the program will automatically be pointing to the default location for the relative history file. If you have your profile stored in a non standard location, you will need to correct this by pointing to the right place. Press the ‘View History‘ button to retrieve the browsers history.
You will then be presented with the history of the chosen browser, with the URL, website name and the date visited columns listed. Firefox and Chrome also have a ‘Visits‘ column to show the number of times that you have been to the web page. Like Windows Explorer, the data is easily sorted by clicking the title bars. Double clicking any entry will open the link in your default browser.
In the bottom right of each window is an ‘Export‘ button to save the history contents with either Html or Xml as the output formats. This will export the current window contents only, not all three.
In the Internet Explorer window, there are a few extra options, such as ‘Remove All‘ or ‘Remove‘ to remove any individual entry.
The last button is ‘Add URL‘ which pops up a window allowing you the to add a website into the Internet Explorer history.
Browser History Spy is a very simple tool to use for both novices and techs.
Compatible with Windows XP, 2003, Vista, Win7