Automatically Delete Browsing History on Exit - Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome

You know all the browsers maintain the list of web sites you have visited called browsing history and you can use this feature to check out what sites you have visited in later time and also it makes browsing speed little fast when you visit the same site on next time.

Privacy is more concern when you deal with Internet. If you using multi user computer, you may don't want others viewing the browser history which have all the information about the sites that you visited.  If you don’t want to record this information, you can configure your browser to automatically to delete browsing history each time when you close the browser or else you can use private browsing feature which available on modern browsers.

You may like to read View browsing history using BrowsingHistoryView

Let’s see how you can delete browsing history each time when you close the browser

Internet Explorer:-

1. Open Internet Explorer and click on “Tools” in Menu bar and then select “Internet Options”

2. In Browsing history section, just check the box next to “Delete browsing history in exit”

3. Then Apply and OK

4. Restart the Internet explorer to apply the settings

Mozilla Firefox:-

1. Open Firefox and click on “Tools” in Menu bar, and then select the “Options”

2. Click the “Privacy” tab in the Options. Then click on “Use Custom settings for history” in the  “Firefox will” drop down box.

3. Check the box next to “Clear history when Firefox closes”  

4. Now click on “OK” and Restart the browser to Apply settings

Google Chrome:-

1. Open Settings from the Chrome Menu

2. Then select the Show advanced settings link at the bottom of the Settings page

3. Click the Content settings under the Privacy tab

4. Under Cookies, select “Keep local data only until I quit my browser” and click OK

5. Restart your browser

Also you can install the Click&Clean extension from the Chrome Web Store

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The Pros and Cons of Private Browsing

What we get up to on the internet is something that most people consider  fairly private matter, it’s a little like asking peoples what they like in the bedroom. For years now, we’ve gotten used to deleting our internet histories, browsing carefully and making sure that we don’t leave tabs open for other people to find (you know what I’m talking about), but you’ve probably heard about private browsing options in your browser and wondered what they actually do. Most modern browsers now offer a private browsing option for users to select, though their implementation varies from program to program, but what are the broad pros and cons?

Pro #1 - Your History Isn't Saved

This is a big one for many people - when you’re in a private browsing window, whatever website you go on will be forgotten as soon as you close the tab itself, meaning that anybody who goes snooping through your history will not see any activity you don’t want them to see. This can prove incredibly useful for buying Christmas, birthday or anniversary gifts without other people finding out what you’ve been looking at. It’s also pretty useful for a number of adult pursuits, which I shan't go into great length about, but needless to say, it can prove a lifesaver in keeping your privacy to yourself.

Pro #2 - You Don’t Need To Download Anything

Way back when, there used to be special browsers made with the specific purpose of not saving your search and browsing history. Sadly, having these installed on your computer looked suspect in and of itself, let alone what you were using it for. All modern browsers now come with this functionality built in, whether it’s called private browsing or incognito mode (Chrome), this mode is usually hidden from sight and won’t cause any suspicion.

Con #1 - You Can Still Be Tracked

Private browsing modes are useful for some things, but what they do not do is stop websites from tracking you across the internet. Many services do this, but it’s mostly advertisers who follow you around from site to site, gathering information which will help them display more relevant advertising to you. They do this through planting tracking cookies in your browser, but there are many anti-tracking extensions and add-ons you can download for your browser to stop this practice from taking place.

Con #2 - Extensions Can Gather Data

When launching into a private browsing session, make sure you’ve only got the extensions you want turned on because many of these extensions can gather data, or even make use of your history. A little diligence on the part of the user can stop this problem, but for many, it’s an easily forgotten piece of advice that goes in one ear and out the other.

So then, we’ve discovered that private browsing, whilst being a useful addition to a browser and a much safer way to look at sensitive websites, isn’t the impenetrable world of privacy that many would hope it is. As always, we recommend that you take care whilst on the internet, in private browsing or otherwise.

Author: Peter Brown writes for Gimmitech on the very latest and greatest gadgets.

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Browser War - Infographic

In my previous post we had a short comparison about topthree browsers Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. The below infographic shows IE9 beating the competition, check it out.   

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How to Disable Compatibility Mode in IE9?

Compatibility mode is a feature in latest version of IE that helps you to view webpages that were designed for previous versions of the browser. Sometimes it can break newer sites that were designed for modern browsers. Hence, here is the tweak for disable it and make sure it only runs for selected sites.

Disable Compatibility Mode in IE9

1. Open Internet Explorer and go to Tools men, then select Compatibility View Settings.

2. Un check the option “Display all websites in Compatibility View”.

3. Go to “Add this website” option and enter the website address which you want to run IE in compatibility mode, then click on Add (It helps you to add the older sites which required compatibility feature).

4. Then close the settings window and refresh the page, now older sites that you left in the list will still use compatibility view and newer ones won’t.

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Remove unwanted tool bar using Toolbar Cleaner

As you know toolbar is an application which makes surfing internet easy and fast.  In other hand, it has bad haviour too. If you installed bad toolbars like searchqu, Babylon, funmoods and Mystart, it definitely makes surfing the internet bit hard. Once these toolbar get installed on the computer, it is hard to remove. In my previous posts I have discussed about the manual removal of these toolbars from Internet explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google chrome. Here I would like to share a free tool that can use to remove unwanted toolbars.

Toolbar Cleaner is a free application that helps to remove unwanted toolbars from Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome. It’s really a one-click solution to purging all of the unwanted toolbars from your computer. Additionally, using this tool you can remove browser help object which are add-ins that modifies a web browser and also you can manage windows start up items. 

Download it from here

Note: Like every freeware it is also have pre-selected options to “change the homepage” and to install “Anti-phishing Domain Advisor” protection on the system. If you do not want these, make sure you disable these options during the installation of Toolbar Cleaner.

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Removal instructions of unwanted Toolbars, Home page and Search engine

Many readers writing  mail to us for  the removal instructions of unwanted toolbars like searchqu, funmoods, babylon, Search Ya, etc…When I checked on various forums I have seen that lots of users are victim of these kind of toolbar installations.  Hence I thought to write an article of general instructions to remove these toolbars.

These toolbars are get inslled on your computer with some other programs as an addon. Once they get installed on your computer, it would change the brwoser settings like home page, search engine and new tab settings on the computer.  So, even you uninstalled or removed the toolbars, the issue is not going to resolve without resetting browser default settings.

To remove unneccessary toolbars follow the below steps.

Close all browser sessions, then click on the Windows Start button and then select the "Control Panel". Then open the Add/Remove Programs or Programs and Features, there you can see the list of installed programs on your computer. Find the toolbars you would like to remove from the list of programs, click on the toolbar, and then select the "Remove" button. For Windows Vista or Windows 7, be sure to click on the "Uninstall a Program" link.

Once you done with uninstallation, you need to remove or resetting the rest of the settings in all your browser.  Here you have step by step instruction to reset the default browser settings in major three browsers.

Change Your Internet Explorer Home Page and Search Engine

1. Open Internet Explorer and click on Tools and Internet Options.

2. Click the General tab, and type in the address of the website you want as your start page under the 'Home page' heading.

3. Under Search click Settings then select your preferred search provider and click set as Default. Remove un necceray serach engnes from there.

4. Click Apply, OK to close the window.

Change Your Google Chrome Home Page and Search Engine

1. Open Google Chrome and click on the spanner icon and select Settings.

2. Go to Appearance and make sure that the Show Home Button box is ticked.

Now click on the Change link, and you can enter the URL of the home page.

3. Click the ‘Manage search engine’ button and choose ‘Google’ and make it your default search engine.

Change Your Mozilla Firefox Home Page and Search Engine

1. Open Mozilla Firefox and click on Tools and select Options.  

2. Go to the Startup section and select When Firefox starts: Show my home page.

3. In the Home Page field, type in the website address you want to use as your home page.

4. Click OK.

5. Click the downward arrow button next to the search box in Firefox. Then select Manage Search Engines and Move up the search engine which you would like to set as default.

We recommend that set Google as your default home page and search engine for a better performance. Leave a comment if you required more assistance. 

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Download Firefox without Using Internet Explorer

What if Internet Explorer doesn't work or crashes at regular time? The next option should be install an alternate browser. At that time you should have a question, is it possible to download alternate browser without Internet Explorer. 

Yes, you can use Windows’ built-in FTP support to download and install Firefox without ever opening IE.It is applicable only for Firefox because Mozilla provides an FTP server but others are not.  Here is the tweak for it!!!

1. To access Mozilla’s FTP server in Windows Explorer, type ftp://ftp.mozilla.org into Windows Explorer’s address bar and press Enter. Then Navigate to the following folder: pub/firefox/releases/latest/win32/en-US/ 

                                                                            OR

Copy the entire address ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/latest/win32/en-US/ to Windows Explorer to go directly to the appropriate folder on Mozilla’s FTP server.

2. You can drag and drop or copy and paste Firefox Setup .exe for download. Then launch the Firefox Setup application to install Firefox.

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Internet Explorer Back button not working

This issue could be because of any corruption in the add-ons or Internet explorer settings. Follow the below steps to resolve the issue.

Method 1: Disable Add-ons using Divide and Conquer method:

1. Click Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Open Internet Explorer (No add-ons)
2. Click on Tools, select Manage Add-ons and   Click Toolbars and Extensions (Under Show: click All add-ons)
3. Then click any add-on and press CTRL + A on your keyboard (this should select all add-ons) and Click Disable all
4. Close Internet Explorer (No add-ons) and Open Internet Explorer  

Now all add-ons are disabled in Internet Explorer, test the back button and see whether the issue is resolved. If you did not see any problem then the next step is to enable the add-ons one by one to find which causes this to happen

1. Open Internet Explorer and click on Tools
2. Select Manage Add-ons and click the first disabled add-on
3. Click Enable and test the Internet Explorer

Similarly enable other add-ons one by one and test to see if the problem has returned. If you did find any corrupted add-on, delete or disable it permanently.   

Method 2: Repair or Reinstall Internet Explorer

First of all try to reset the Internet explorer to the default settings; it may help to solve most of the problems with Internet Explorer and if it did not resolve your problem try to re install the Internet Explorer.

How to reinstall or repair Internet Explorer in Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/318378

Feel free to comment, if you required more assistance. 

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