First we had Chrome and Firefox with their Incognito and Private modes respectively, a feature that proved popular enough that even Microsoft put its own version into Internet Explorer, starting from version 9. It looks like Mozilla is taking the whole super-secret browsing thing a step further, sticking a “clear history” button right on the toolbar, which can wipe out your web escapades in chunks as small as five minutes.
Image by Sören Hentzschel
According to Mozilla representative and add-on developer Sören Hentzschel, come Firefox 33.0.1, the browser will have a shiny, new (and very red) “undo” button, allowing users to quickly delete their browsing history from the previous five minutes, two hours or the current day.
In addition to doing the usual purge of the cache and cookies, it’ll also close all tabs and windows and open a “new clean Window”. It’s almost like a “boss key” from an old computer game.
A neat feature, sure, but it’s hard to see the benefit over opening a Private window and doing your browsing there. Where it’ll be handy is if you accidentally go somewhere you’d prefer not to have a record of, or for short “bursts” of incognito web delving.
That last sentence sounded cleaner in my head.
Firefox 33 gets privacy button [Sören Hentzschel, via gHacks]
Comments
One response to “Firefox 33 Is Getting An ‘Undo’ Button Of Sorts”
Yeah I agree going into incognito mode makes more sense, but this button should be simple enough that it’s more so a matter of why not rather than why.
This has been a feature of Firefox for many years, the only new thing is the button bringing it to the surface rather than tucked away.