Clear History in Firefox

When you surf the Internet and browse through different websites and web pages, your Mozilla Firefox browser stores all the information you entered on websites, a list of websites you visited and a list of Internet downloads. It is in fact, helpful to have your web history stored in your web browser, as it enables search suggest options, which makes your Internet browsing speed faster. But sometimes, people want their web histories to be inaccessible secrets. For example, if an employee visited some websites, and made some downloads from his office computer, although harmless, he might want to clear history in Firefox. Firefox keeps a track on the following types of Internet history:

• Download History
• Browsing History
• Search History
• Cookies
• Cache
• Saved Form Information
• Saved Passwords

How to Clear History in Firefox Browser

The following steps on how to clear history on Firefox, work with Firefox Version 1.5 to Firefox Version 3.5.

Firefox Version 2.0 (Only Browsing History)
The following steps will guide you on how to clear browsing history on Firefox version 2.0. These steps will erase only the browsing history that means, the list of websites visited by you on Firefox.

1. Open a blank Firefox window.
2. On the menu bar, select and click on "Tools".
3. Click on "Options".
4. Select "Privacy".
5. Click on "Clear Now" which you will find in private area.
6. In "Clear private Data" window, click it to mark it as checked for "Browsing History" and then click to choose "Clear Private Data Now" after which you must click "OK".

Firefox Version 1.5 (Only Browsing History)
With the following steps, only the browsing history of your Firefox version 1.5 can be erased.

1. Open a blank Mozilla Firefox browsing Window and select "Tools".
2. Click on "Options".
3. Select and click "Privacy".
4. Open the tab "History" and then click on "Clear Browsing History Now" after which you must click "OK".

The reason why I elaborated the steps on how to wipe history records from Firefox versions 1.5 and 2.0 is because it is a little complicated task in these versions. In the newer versions of Firefox like 3.0 and 3.5, it is much easier to perform the clear history task in Firefox.

Remember that, this task of deleting Firefox history can be performed on cookies, cache, saved forms, download and search history, by checking or unchecking any of these options as per your choice and preference. Keeping the first three steps the same, when you reach the "Privacy" option which will lead you to "Clear Private Data now" (in Firefox 2.0) or "History" (in Firefox 1.5), you can mark for cookies, forms, download history and cache etc.

Firefox Versions 3.0 & 3.5
The first step towards clear history Firefox 3.0 and 3.5 is closing out all the windows. This will allow you to have control over your Firefox browser, when you have many web pages open. Click on the close button on the top right corner of the window, to close it. If a window has multiple number of tabs, clicking on the close window button will close all the tabs at once. So, you either choose which tabs to close or close them all along with the window.

1. Click on "Tools".
2. Select "Clear Private Data" option.
3. When you click on "Clear Private Data" or "Clear Recent History", you will be redirected to a small box in which you will have to enter the time range and the details to delete as a part of Internet history.
4. Click on the drop down box that appears next to time range, so as to clear history and to choose how old (time related) history you want to delete (for example: last two hours, last four hours etc).
5. Click on the drop down box that appears next to "Details".
6. In this drop down, you may select anything from "Browsing and download History", "Form and Search history", "Cookies", "Cache", "Active logins" and "Site Preferences". You can mark/check mark any of these or all of these, according to your requirements.

How to Clear History for a Single Website

Click on the History menu on the top of a Firefox window and click on "Show All History". This will lead you to the library window. Type the name of the web page or website that you want to erase from history, by typing it on "Search History" search-box located at the top right corner of this library window and then press "Enter Return". In this list, right-click and hold down the "Ctrl" key of your keyboard while you click on the name of the website you wish to erase and the select and click on "Forget About This Site" option. Similarly, you can delete download history individually by opening the downloads window. Once you open this window, click "Remove" right next to a download, to delete it from your list of downloads.

How to Clear History in the Address Bar on Firefox

It might sound tough initially, but believe me, this is the easiest method of all. All you need to do is:

1. Open a Firefox window and click on the drop down arrow in the address bar.
2. It will show a list of websites recently browsed.
3. From this list, just scroll and select the name of the website that you wish to delete, WITHOUT clicking it, and then simply press "Delete" key on the keyboard.
4. This will delete that individual website from the address bar and recent history both.

These steps will surely work if you will follow them the way they have been written. Here's wishing you good luck!