The address of every web page you visit is recorded in your browser history file. Your browser checks the history file every time you visit a web page, which is how it knows how to change the colour of links you have already visited. You can access your history file with most browsers by typing the command <ctrl>-h.
The most common uses of a history file are described below:
- Revisit sites. If you visited a site somewhere on the Internet and would like to return, but can’t remember the URL, you can often find it in your history file. You can search for the site by the date visited, or by a text string search, and then double-click the entry to visit it.
- Search. You can search your history file for keywords to find sites you may have forgotten you visited.
- Delete. You can delete entries in your history file by highlighting them and pressing <delete>. When you subsequently visit a page with those links, they will be coloured like normal links that have never been visited.
You can also specify how long to keep pages in your history file:
Internet Explorer: Tools / Internet Options / General / History
Mozilla Firefox: Tools / Options / Privacy / History