Firefox tip: removing stored history and form data

23 May 2006

21 comments

A Blue Perspective: Firefox tip: removing stored history and form data

Everyone probably already knows this, but I only just discovered it, so I thought I'd share it with that other fool who didn't know:

In Firefox, you can delete all those annoying form entries you mistyped but the browser stored anyway. Just highlight the one you want to remove, then hit shift-delete on the keyboard. This means you won't have to empty your entire stored form data just to remove "girls gone wild dvd" from the search field on eBay.

Handily, it works for most of the suggestion dropdowns in Firefox – form fields, the quick search field, and also the location field.

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Comments

  1. 1/21

    dez commented on 23 May 2006 @ 23:33

    I mus be that other fool then, cause I didn't know that. Here's to the G*GW WD06 edition! [*Geeks]

  2. 2/21

    Steve commented on 23 May 2006 @ 23:53

    Yet another reason why I would never dream of using MSIE. Firefox simply keeps on kicking butt.

  3. 3/21

    Bramus! commented on 24 May 2006 @ 00:56

    Heh, and I here was always trying the delete button, solo (cfr. Outlook autocomplete when composing a mail).

    Tnx for this tip, will definately come in handy!

  4. 4/21

    web commented on 24 May 2006 @ 02:28

    Thanks, was looking for this a few weeks back. After about 10 minutes I gave up.

    + 1 uber point.

  5. 5/21

    Ingo Chao commented on 24 May 2006 @ 02:56


    In Fx1.5.0.3 Mac, this works, but only if the address line is empty?

  6. 6/21

    Ethan commented on 24 May 2006 @ 02:59

    Wow, great tip--thanks! But how'd you ever find that out?

  7. 7/21

    Terry Apodaca commented on 24 May 2006 @ 04:07

    Cool...I didn't know this. IE had something similar in an earlier version. Nice to have it back!

  8. 8/21

    Scott Johnson commented on 24 May 2006 @ 06:22

    I didn't know this one either. I could have made use of this neat little feature plenty of times in the past, too. It would be nice to have a handy reference of all sorts of tips like this that I don't know about. :)

  9. 9/21

    James AkaXakA commented on 26 May 2006 @ 17:38

    Seems like there's a lot of other fools - me included!

  10. 10/21

    Button commented on 26 May 2006 @ 22:43

    *hand raise* - me a fool too, in this case.

    Another annoyment with Firefox is within the cache ... sometimes he won't show you a changed image ... in this case there is a big difference if you hit the "refresh"-button in the toolbar - or if you use the "reload" in the right-mouse-click-menu.

    Only the context-menu reload really the site and shows changed images.

    Little offtopic, but... FF

  11. 11/21

    anada commented on 28 May 2006 @ 02:39

    this is a new discovery for me, too, thanks for sharing^_^

  12. 12/21

    splintor commented on 29 May 2006 @ 14:41

    @Steve & Terry: I don't know about IE 7, but in IE 6, this works with a simple Delete, and also with a Shift-Delete.

    Firefox is a better browser, but not for this reason...

  13. 13/21

    Mitch Cumstein commented on 30 May 2006 @ 19:54

    "Only the context-menu reload really the site and shows changed images."

    Brilliant! This is a revelation for me!

    THX

  14. 14/21

    David Byrne commented on 1 June 2006 @ 06:25

    Thanks for the tip!

  15. 15/21

    Marko Mihelcic commented on 2 June 2006 @ 01:31

    Great advise :) tnx

  16. 16/21

    mynameisstolen commented on 2 June 2006 @ 04:55

    This is super cool! I was wondering how to do this. Thanks bunches.

  17. 17/21

    Alborz Fallah commented on 3 June 2006 @ 12:54

    Damn! All this time I had togo and delete the whole file to get ride of the bad ones!
    Thanks!

  18. 18/21

    Jimmy commented on 3 June 2006 @ 22:35

    Sure would be nice if the Firefox team would care to document these "tips" and "tricks".

  19. 19/21

    Bramus! commented on 9 June 2006 @ 23:22

    Oh yeah ... accidently discovered this today: when focused on the quick search bar, you can swap the engine with CTRL+arrowkeys.
    Oh boy I feel sheepish for not having noticed this earlier (been using fx since 0.3)

  20. 20/21

    Kevin Futter commented on 10 June 2006 @ 20:07

    Maybe it's just me, but this works for me in FF/Win, but not FF/Mac. Cam, you use a PowerBook now (sorry, MacBook!), so I'm assuming it works under OS X for you?

  21. 21/21

    some guy commented on 11 June 2006 @ 14:33

    damn, that's cool. thanks for sharing.

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