Contextual web history: using visual and contextual cues to improve web browser history

ABSTRACT

While most modern web browsers offer history functionality, few people use it to revisit previously viewed web pages. In this paper, we present the design and evaluation of Contextual Web History (CWH), a novel browser history implementation which improves the visibility of the history feature and helps people find previously visited web pages. We present the results of a formative user study to understand what factors helped people in finding past web pages. From this, we developed CWH to be more visible to users, and supported search, browsing, thumbnails, and metadata. Combined, these relatively simple features outperformed Mozilla Firefox 3's built-in browser history function, and greatly reduced the time and effort required to find and revisit a web page.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  J. Computer Applications
  J.0 GENERAL

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.0 GENERAL

General Terms:
Design, Human Factors

Keywords:
re-finding, revisitation, web browser, web history