Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Hi,

For a long time, I've griped that the browser history system is old and neglected, but given some love, could potentially be a powerful tool. A lot of my web searches are for content that I have seen in the past, and while browser history is great for the back button (and the awesome bar), the ability to re-find old content has been sub par.

My friend, Alan and I, prompted by the Mozilla Firefox Extend Contest, decided to write a firefox extension that took a fresh look at the browser history system, trying to get past some of the current deficiencies like the lack of integration of multiple tabs being open, the inability to monitor ajaxy sites, etc, and being able to do more than search by hostname and date.

Boomtango is our rough attempt to put together a system that allows you to search by the content of your page or see your history automatically categorized by it's content. It's all stored locally in a sqlite db, so your web browsing never hits our server.

Let us know what you think. We're not awesome ui designers or expert marketers, so any feedback you have, regardless how harsh, would be very enlightening and helpful.

Thanks!



hi Will,

Super idea, this has been a major annoyance to me in the recent past, the inability to find stuff that I know I've read for sure.

First comment, please make it so that it will import all the history from the browser that it is installed on (if someone should want that).

thanks !


It's not mentioned anywhere on the site, but it does do that. Unfortunately, the browser history doesn't contain as much data as boomtango tracks (the full content of the page, any information we grab off the dom, thumbnail previews) etc. It's still handy, but not quite as full featured as the history you generate after it is installed.


Hm, weird, all the previous dates other than today are blank (and today only shows what I loaded after installing).

Also, I noticed that when I switch to the boomtango tab it shows 'phantom' entries, as soon as I click on them the day shows as empty.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: