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Making A Better Browser History

Posted by timothy on from the and-a-browser-is-a-mousetrap dept.

jbtule writes "Students at the University of Illinois have released TrailBlazer, a new user interface to represent your web browsing history. It lays out the pages you visit in a simple 2D map with thumbnails and summaries. The project took 2nd place at the university's annual Engineering Open House and a three minute video is available that demonstrates TrailBlazer for those who don't have Mac OS X Panther. TrailBlazer is implemented with Apple's WebKit on a bare bones browser, but this interface would probably be more useful if it were added to a real browser. This is a much better history than chronological lists of web page titles or crazy cubes floating around a 3D space. Hopefully Safari or /insert favorite web browser/ will do something similar in the future."

8 of 291 comments (clear)

  1. Thumbnails? by Short+Circuit · · Score: 5, Funny

    Am I the only one who doesn't want to be reminded of some of the sites he's seen? Like *cx?

    --
    tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
    1. Re:Thumbnails? by markxsd · · Score: 3, Funny

      Anyone else done a public demo of a web application and seen www..com being autocompleted in the address box as you type???

    2. Re:Thumbnails? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Cleaning the mouse and keyboard might also be a good thing to do before touching anything else.

  2. Re:The cyberspatial compass by CoolVibe · · Score: 1, Funny
    You mention Descent... I still get nausea and vertigo when I think about it. Thanks for the memory, bub.

    :)

  3. Re:The cyberspatial compass by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny
    that will consume enormous amounts of CPU and memory

    Go back to your days of timesharing on a University mainframe. The rest of us don't mind using a couple hundred gigs to get some real work done.

  4. Re:The cyberspatial compass by trs998 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Ive got that. I played it for about 3 hours, thinking that i'd get used to it. I didnt, and spent the next 2 days with a headache whenever I thought about it. The hardest bit was flying into a large room, having a bit of a fight, then spending the next 10 minutes trying to work out which of the 5 door you came in.
    One copy of descent 3 for sale... hardly used!

  5. Great just Great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    So now if I forget to clear my browser history every day, not only does my wife see www.spankmehard.com in my history - she sees thumbnails of the spankees.

    Fight against this one boys. Someday you will be old and married also.

  6. Re:The cyberspatial compass by qengho · · Score: 2, Funny


    I still get nausea and vertigo when I think about [Descent].

    Oh yeah, but it wasn't as bad as Alien vs. Predator, playing as the alien. My wife couldn't even be in the same room as the monitor.