[EXT] Norwell history tools

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howtofixit
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Joined: May 10th, 2017, 5:40 am

How do I search the time frame I need??

Post by howtofixit »

I don't understand how to use this add on at all - I installed it because I lost some work from late February/early March and firefox History is only showing my History going back through April. When I try using Norwell history tool it is only showing my history from today, even when I tried using the Limits widget, I checked enable on that and then selected From 27 February To 2 March, but it still shows me only today - 10 May, 2017! :oops: :oops: :oops:
pirst
Posts: 206
Joined: January 2nd, 2008, 7:07 am
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Re: How do I search the time frame I need??

Post by pirst »

howtofixit wrote:I don't understand how to use this add on at all - I installed it because I lost some work from late February/early March and firefox History is only showing my History going back through April. When I try using Norwell history tool it is only showing my history from today, even when I tried using the Limits widget, I checked enable on that and then selected From 27 February To 2 March, but it still shows me only today - 10 May, 2017! :oops: :oops: :oops:
did you press the magnifying glass button in the search bar after selecting limits?
Elhem Enohpi
Posts: 49
Joined: March 19th, 2016, 8:49 am

Re: [EXT] Norwell history tools

Post by Elhem Enohpi »

Pressing the magnifying glass button after selecting date limits does nothing for me. Like the other people, I still only see today's history. Using a Mac with FF53.0.2.

Eventually I found out that I can get the results by clicking in the search bar, without typing anything, and then pressing the Enter key.

@pirst, maybe you could put some more instructions in the description? Maybe it could be nice if there was an "ok" button or something like that, in the limits pop-up box, that would close the box and show the results.

After I figured out how to work it, it's a great tool. Thank-you for making it!!
q.dinar
Posts: 54
Joined: May 31st, 2008, 11:27 pm

Re: [EXT] Norwell history tools

Post by q.dinar »

feature suggestion: open any places.sqlite file from file system, that can be saved with other name. (i save/backup it every several months, because firefox deletes old history. i tried to browse it with sqlite manager plugin but it is hard. so i have to copy it to a firefox profile with norwell for now.)
pirst
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Re: [EXT] Norwell history tools

Post by pirst »

q.dinar,
just an idea for workaround - you can create different user profiles for each places.sqlite file if you do not want to import and combine them with norwell. It's probably not to be trusted, but "expire history by days" http://addons.mozilla.org/addon/expire-history-by-days/ extension has setting to prevent firefox from deleting old history. I have history almost 5 years old - 2,5 million records, but at this point in history users do not own their own internet browsing history - some sort of gestapo owns and handles it for them in some sort of big data surveillance log cabin.. probably in the woods erected on the top of soot cloud technology.
just think about it - modern personal computers are probably 100 times more powerful than most powerful web servers 20 years ago and those webservers 20 years ago could log and preserve history from hundreds of websites simultaneously processing millions of records every hour. So it really doesn't make any sense their claims that big history somehow slows down internet browsing experience. The only reasonable bottleneck to be expected is marking visited links as visited as it involves checking encountered links against increasingly ballooning database of places.sqlite. But that part of firefox is programmed by using some sort of tar budget "magic" - even with 2.5 million records in my 1gb places.sqlite file on my computer any given page even with thousands of links displays all the links correctly and instantly. Awesome bar is programmed by using less gray shade of tar budgets - it's sluggish, but not to the point to be annoying to be abandoned or disabled. I still use it. Modern computing revealed some nefarious aspects about this entire cyber operation across the board. It's was encrypted dual use technology that pretty much was just a bait. So it would be mistake to even consider that we arrived at this crossroad of wicked problem due to some sort of misuse or negligence of some dr evil bad forbidden fruit, apple of your eye, windows to your soul, etc.. I speculate it's part of "global WAR-ming" which is liquid substance produced out of thawing rigid cold war where all parties involved united under flag of entire spectrum of joint gen IV warfare operations. of course word "generation" most likely is not about warfare, but about targeted generation trying to make all countries great (britain) again, with weapons of no country for old men where cut off age is no child left behind. So here we have it - tar budget lives matter. top secret stuff, but bottom secret is probably even more secret...
PictureThis
Posts: 9
Joined: November 1st, 2006, 8:19 am

Re: [EXT] Norwell history tools

Post by PictureThis »

Thank you very much for creating this excellent and much needed extension. It already saved me hours of searching for a particular site this week. I have 3 questions:

1. Is it possible to save the column width?

2. When entering dot "." in the Norwell search field (display complete browsing history) the count of results differ from the total history entries. What causes the difference?

3. Do you accept donations for this project?
pirst
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Re: [EXT] Norwell history tools

Post by pirst »

1. norwell doesn't have such capability.
2. it might be related to some special entries in places.sqlite that don't have dots in them eg created as part of bookmarks toolbar

Code: Select all

place:folder=BOOKMARKS_MENU&folder=UNFILED_BOOKMARKS&folder=TOOLBAR&queryType=1&sort=12&maxResults=10&excludeQueries=1
. try executing query without anything in the search field, but setting date limits so it would cover your entire history. eg limit only top ceiling. Those special entries don't have timestamps on them.
3. i guess only if its not called a donation
xerobia
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Re: [EXT] Norwell history tools

Post by xerobia »

Hey Pirst,

I had been using your wonderful tool for quite a bit of time, however now with Firefox Quantum, they have not allowed it to be downloaded for Firefox 57 due to an issue with only supporting addons with a specific architecture. I was hoping you would be able to update it for the new version! :D
pirst
Posts: 206
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Re: [EXT] Norwell history tools

Post by pirst »

xerobia,

sorry, but i'm myself still on firefox version 38. I don't have resources to "update" norwell. I'm not part of gilded clique of tar budgets unicorns who work according "you're with us or against us" doctrine. So if looking into the real world from perspective of that equation - nobody is with us and i'm on the verge being hunted 6 feet down like pokemon in hunger games. Don't use any cause and effect type thinking in times of equality regime where even war equals peace, freedom fries rapidly into modern slavery and free range serfdom, etc.. So this rapid release madness that doesn't really bring anything to the public computing except stripping off the features and artificially inflating and ballooning of the code and of course other "our (kinds of) things". In that sense firefox just like any other internet browser is a dual use technology cyberweapon produced by and for military industrial complex in this case to perform strange games brexit aristocrats play aka fox hunt to fire at foxes keeping america and the world on line, firing line that is. maybe front line. So with norwell or without it use any internet browser with caution. When douchebags on this boards repeat like hare krishna mantra that they are not affiliated with mozilla they are not exactly lying as it impossible for them to be in such position. They are for most part military contractors, subcontractors, numbered citizens of global WAR-ming of the world riding no such agency lulzboats laughing maniacally all the way to the bank called citi with swastika worshiping zen induced laughter, etc. There is no such organization as mozilla apart from open sesame tar budget expenditures for public relations, events and social media, so there is no need to attack such windmills by rioting near their stonewalls. I don't think it's exactly important that they keep your generated browsing history to themselves in some don't be evil Dr Evil surveillance log cabin in the woods. That part about oxymoron doublespeak buzz words like big data, cloud technology, IOT, etc is probably just decoy and not only in department of linguistics and semantics, but more about high quality entertainment at your expense of your beautiful mind. One crazy idea for time being - what if installing another lower version of firefox say 55 side by side, configuring it not to update and using it just for accessing your history from v 57 places.sqlite file.

Image

p.s. don't make mistake that they are mocking trump with this courageous hand that holds Mr Hand. Another mistake that you shouldn't make is thinking that pale moon or any other browser is some sort of fall back "safer" alternative. Notice when moon is pale it's shape resembles a crescent?
bex1210
Posts: 139
Joined: April 17th, 2006, 11:10 am

Re: [EXT] Norwell history tools

Post by bex1210 »

Pirst:

I recently installed Norwell Version 3.1.0.2.1-signed.1-signed on my Pale Moon browser (Ver. 27.9.2). The program works, and was recommended by other Pale Moon users.

But I can't understand what the Enable Options do; esp the ones that deal with lengths and counts, and default to -1 or 0. (I was going to add a photo, but it doesn't appear I can do that on this forum).

Could you provide a brief explanation of what all the options on this page do?

Thanks,


Harry
pirst
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Re: [EXT] Norwell history tools

Post by pirst »

it's for filtering and narrowing down the results of your history.

For example this page is url

Code: Select all

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=2860307&start=60
title of this page is

Code: Select all

[EXT] Norwell history tools • mozillaZine Forums
Lets say you're trying to remember a name of website that is very short domain name eg https://www.cnn.com that you visited past month. So one of the options is to try looking for websites that urls are less than 25 characters long. Similar story with titles, but it's just an option. Narrowing by visit count is another option - if you know you visited a website just once or less than 3 times.
The reason defaults are -1 or 0 is due to the way database is setup. For example url can't be zero in database, but titles and visit counts can be blank.
bex1210
Posts: 139
Joined: April 17th, 2006, 11:10 am

Re: [EXT] Norwell history tools

Post by bex1210 »

Pirst:

Thanks for the quick response.

I think I understand now what each of the options do. So I opened my last run. I looked at what was listed, and chose the following settings, which should have resulted in at least three hits: a span of the last three days, and a URL length of <10.

But nothing happened. What was shown on my screen from my last run was still all there. I did not find any button/command that would trigger the action to meet my criteria. What have I missed?

Also, I assumed that when I clicked on the Norwell entry on the History tab, I would have seen all 1500 (estimate) of the entries that were created when I ran Norwell. But what I got was about 115 entries all made on May 23. The title of what was opened is chrome://norwell/content/norwell.xul. Did I do this wrong?


Harry
pirst
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Re: [EXT] Norwell history tools

Post by pirst »

bex1210,
norwell opens with todays history. if you didn't browse any pages this particular day - it opens without any history for today. that part is counterintuitive - it's not user friendly, but thats what it is.

In order to activate search you need to click with your mouse magnifying glass button located on the very right of the "search history" field or put mouse cursor there and press enter with keyboard.

If you want to display all your history enter in the search field something very common that exists in all urls - a dot -> .

keep in mind that url length of 10 characters is very short. In my history of more than 3 million entries there is only one entry that meets this criteria:

Code: Select all

file:///
URL of even one letter domain name of two character country code eg http://a.uk is already 11 characters
bex1210
Posts: 139
Joined: April 17th, 2006, 11:10 am

Re: [EXT] Norwell history tools

Post by bex1210 »

Wow. What a powerful tool this is, now that you explained when, and how. to actuate Limits->Enable through the use of the magnifying glass button. And how to list all entries with the dot entry.

In my last reply I made a mistake. I was searching for a title length <10 characters, not a URL length. Sorry that made you do some more work.

One last question, and I will be quiet. Is there any way I can determine how many results met my searching criteria, or how many entries are in the database when I use the dot entry? I see I can select a group of contiguous entries with Ctrl+click, but I can't find a way to copy or save those entries in order to count them.

Harry
pirst
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Re: [EXT] Norwell history tools

Post by pirst »

bex1210,
on the norwell menu bar after search field there is grayout button that has three numbers on it. first number shows how many records are being displayed in the norwell interface: automatically (eg todays date when you first open Norwell) or by search that you initiated. Second number shows total records in your history database. Third number shows the seconds it took for norwell to perform the query.
Some of the norwell functions are explained in the popup when you click the [?] button on the very left of the norwell menu
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