| BrowsingHistoryView v1.50
Copyright (c) 2012 - 2014 Nir Sofer Web site: http://www.nirsoft.net |
Description
BrowsingHistoryView is a utility that reads the history data of 4 different Web browsers (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Safari) and displays the browsing history of all these Web browsers in one table. The browsing history table includes the following information: Visited URL, Title, Visit Time, Visit Count, Web browser and User Profile. BrowsingHistoryView allows you to watch the browsing history of all user profiles in a running system, as well as to get the browsing history from external hard drive.You can also export the browsing history into csv/tab-delimited/html/xml file from the user interface, or from command-line, without displaying any user interface.
Versions History
- Version 1.50:
- Added 'Load history from the specified history files' option in the 'Advanced Options' window.
- Version 1.44:
- Fixed bug from v1.43: BrowsingHistoryView stopped working on Windows 2000.
- Version 1.43:
- Fixed to display date/time values according to daylight saving time settings.
- Version 1.42:
- Added /cfg command-line option, which instructs BrowsingHistoryView to use a config file in another location instead if the default config file, for example:
BrowsingHistoryView.exe /cfg "%AppData%\BrowsingHistoryView.cfg"
- Added /cfg command-line option, which instructs BrowsingHistoryView to use a config file in another location instead if the default config file, for example:
- Version 1.41
- Fixed a bug with displaying IDN URLs (URLs containing non-English characters) from Firefox history.
- Version 1.40
- Added new data source in the 'Advanced Options' window: Load history from the specified custom folders. In this option, you can select the correct AppData folder, Local AppData folder, and the History folder of the profile you want to inspect.
- Version 1.36
- Fixed the problem with the 'Advanced Options' window on Windows 2000.
- Version 1.35
- Added 'Show Advanced Options On Start' option. You can turn off this option if you don't want that the 'Advanced Options' window will appear on every time that you run BrowsingHistoryView.
- Version 1.33
- Improved the detection of AppData and Local AppData folders when reading the history from external drive.
- Version 1.32
- Added secondary sorting: When clicking the 'Web Browser' column header, the list is sorted by the 'Web Browser' column, and then by the 'Visit Time' column.
- Version 1.31
- Added option to get the history from Internet Explorer API, instead of reading the file directly. (Available only when loading the history of the current user).
- Version 1.30
- Added improved support for Internet Explorer 10, which works smoothly and doesn't require to run BrowsingHistoryView as administrator.
There is no need to execute BrowsingHistoryView with any additinal command-line option in order to read the locked file of IE10 (WebCacheV24.dat or WebCacheV01.dat), and the /UseVolumeShadowCopy command-line option added
on v1.15 was removed from this version.
Be aware that during browsing on IE10, you may get corrupted history result, because the database is not fully flushed to the disk.
Also, be aware that BrowsingHistoryView cannot read a locked IE10 file on a remote network system.
- Added improved support for Internet Explorer 10, which works smoothly and doesn't require to run BrowsingHistoryView as administrator.
There is no need to execute BrowsingHistoryView with any additinal command-line option in order to read the locked file of IE10 (WebCacheV24.dat or WebCacheV01.dat), and the /UseVolumeShadowCopy command-line option added
on v1.15 was removed from this version.
- Version 1.27
- Fixed bug: BrowsingHistoryView failed to load Firefox profile located on a drive letter which is different from the drive letter where the Windows profiles (c:\users ...) are located.
- Fixed the flickering appeared while scrolling the history items.
- Version 1.26
- Fixed bug: When exporting browser history data with /SaveDirect command-line option, BrowsingHistoryView added byte order mark of Unicode, while the file was saved as Ascii.
- Version 1.25
- BrowsingHistoryView now reads the history of all profiles from Chrome and Chrome Canary Web browsers.
- Version 1.21
- Fixed bug: BrowsingHistoryView displayed corrupted URLs from partially deleted records of Internet Explorer history file.
- Version 1.20
- Added support for Chrome Canary and SeaMonkey Web browsers.
- Added 'Mark Odd/Even Rows' option, under the View menu. When it's turned on, the odd and even rows are displayed in different color, to make it easier to read a single line.
- Version 1.16
- Fixed bug: BrowsingHistoryView failed to read some of the history items of Internet Explorer 10.
- Version 1.15
- Added support for Internet Explorer 10 (WebCacheV24.dat or WebCacheV01.dat). There are some limitations and problems with this version of Internet Explorer. See the 'Internet Explorer 10 Support' section for more information.
- Version 1.10
- Added 'Visited From' column (Only for Firefox and Chrome), which displays the URL that the user has visited prior to the Web page specified under the URL column.
- Version 1.06
- Fixed BrowsingHistoryView to display the Web page title for Internet Explorer Web browser.
- Version 1.05
- Added 'Copy URLs' option (Ctrl+U)
- Added 'Open URL In Web Browser' option.
- Version 1.01
- BrowsingHistoryView now reads the profiles.ini file of Firefox to get the correct profile folders.
- Version 1.00 - First release.
System Requirements
This utility works on any version of Windows, starting from Windows 2000, and up to Windows 8. Both 32-bit and x64 systems are supported.The following Web browsers are supported:
- Internet Explorer (Version 4.00 and greater)
- Mozilla Firefox (Version 3.00 and greater)
- Google Chrome
- Safari
Start Using BrowsingHistoryView
BrowsingHistoryView doesn't require any installation process or additional dll files. In order to start using it, simply run the executable file - BrowsingHistoryView.exeAfter you run BrowsingHistoryView, the 'Advanced Options' window is displayed. By default, BrowsingHistoryView offers you to load the history of all Web browsers and all user profiles in the last 10 days, but you can change the options according to your needs.
After pressing 'Ok' in the 'Advanced Options' window, BrowsingHistoryView loads and displays the browsing history according to the options you chose.
The 'Advanced Options' Window
- Filter by visit date/time: Allows you to load the history from the last number of days/hours, or from specific date/time range.
- Web Browsers: BrowsingHistoryView will load the history only from the selected Web browsers. For example, if you want to only get the browsing history of Internet Explorer, then you need to select the 'Internet Explorer' check-box and deselect all others.
- Load history from:
Allows you to choose the data source of the browsing history:
- Load history from the current running system (All users):
If you choose this option, BrowsingHistoryView scans all the user profiles on your system (C:\Documents and Settings or C:\Users)
and loads the history data from them.
Be aware that the Registry file of every user profile (NTUSER.DAT) should be readable, because BrowsingHistoryView uses the Registry file to locate the correct history file/folder of every Web browser. If BrowsingHistoryView cannot read NTUSER.DAT, it'll try to locate the correct folders in other less reliable ways. - Load history from the current running system (Only current user): If you choose this option, BrowsingHistoryView loads only the browsing history of the current logged-on user.
- Load history from the specified profiles folder:
If you choose this option, BrowsingHistoryView scans all the user profiles under the specified folder.
The specified folder should be something like H:\Documents and Settings (On Windows XP) or H:\Users (On Windows 7/2008/Vista/8).
Be aware that the Registry file of every user profile (NTUSER.DAT) should be readable, because BrowsingHistoryView uses the Registry file to locate the correct history file/folder of every Web browser. If BrowsingHistoryView cannot read NTUSER.DAT, it'll try to locate the correct folders in other less reliable ways. - Load history from the specified profile:
If you choose this option, BrowsingHistoryView loads the history from the specified profile folder.
The specified profile folder should be something like H:\Documents and Settings\Administrator (On Windows XP) or H:\Users\Administrator (On Windows 7/2008/Vista/8).
- Load history from the current running system (All users):
If you choose this option, BrowsingHistoryView scans all the user profiles on your system (C:\Documents and Settings or C:\Users)
and loads the history data from them.
Reading History From Remote Computer
If you have read access to the user profiles in another computer on your network, you can use BrowsingHistoryView to directly view the browsing history of the remote computer. However, due to the fact that the Registry file on the remote computer is probably locked, in some systems BrowsingHistoryView might fail to locate the correct history files or folders.In order to view the browsing history of all user profiles in a remote computer, use the 'Load history from the specified profiles folder' option, and then type the profiles folder on the remote computer, for example: \\192.168.0.10\c$\users
In order to view the browsing history of a single user profile in a remote computer, use the 'Load history from the specified profile' option, and then type the profile folder on the remote computer, for example: \\192.168.0.10\c$\users\user01
Command-Line Options
| /cfg <Filename> |
Start BrowsingHistoryView with the specified configuration file.
For example:
BrowsingHistoryView.exe /cfg "c:\config\bhv.cfg" BrowsingHistoryView.exe /cfg "%AppData%\BrowsingHistoryView.cfg" |
| /stext <Filename> | Save the browsing history into a regular text file. |
| /stab <Filename> | Save the browsing history into a tab-delimited text file. |
| /scomma <Filename> | Save the browsing history into a comma-delimited text file (csv). |
| /stabular <Filename> | Save the browsing history into a tabular text file. |
| /shtml <Filename> | Save the browsing history into HTML file (Horizontal). |
| /sverhtml <Filename> | Save the browsing history into HTML file (Vertical). |
| /sxml <Filename> | Save the browsing history into XML file. |
| /sort <column> |
This command-line option can be used with other save options for sorting by the desired column.
If you don't specify this option, the list is sorted according to the last sort that you made from the user interface.
The <column> parameter can specify the column index (0 for the first column, 1 for the second column, and so on) or
the name of the column, like "Title" and "URL".
You can specify the '~' prefix character (e.g: "~Visit Time") if you want to sort in descending order.
You can put multiple /sort in the command-line if you want to sort by multiple columns.
Examples:
|
| /nosort | When you specify this command-line option, the list will be saved without any sorting. |
| /SaveDirect | Save the browsing history in SaveDirect mode. For using with the other save command-line options ( /scomma, /stab, /sxml, and so on...) When you use the SaveDirect mode, the history lines are saved directly to the disk, without loading them into the memory first. This means that you can save a list with large amount of history lines into your disk without any memory problem, as long as you have enough disk space to store the saved file. The drawback of this mode: You cannot sort the lines according to the column you choose with /sort command-line option. |
| /HistorySource <Source> |
Specifies the type of history data source:
|
| /HistorySourceFolder <Folder> | Specifies the folder path if /HistorySource is 3 or 4. |
| /VisitTimeFilterType <Filter Type> |
Specifies the type of date/time filter:
|
| /VisitTimeFilterValue <Filter Value> | Specifies the filter value when /VisitTimeFilterType is 2 or 3 |
|
/VisitTimeFrom <Time> /VisitTimeTo <Time> |
Specifies the date/time range when /VisitTimeFilterType is 4.
date/time value must be in the following format: dd-mm-yyyy hh:nn:ss
For example:
|
|
/LoadIE <0 | 1> /LoadFirefox <0 | 1> /LoadChrome <0 | 1> /LoadSafari <0 | 1> | Specifies whether to load the history of IE/Firefox/Chrome/Safari Web browser. 0 = Don't load, 1 = Load. |
Here's some command-line examples:
BrowsingHistoryView.exe /HistorySource 4 /HistorySourceFolder "H:\Documents and Settings\User01" /stab "c:\temp\history.txt"
BrowsingHistoryView.exe /HistorySource 3 /HistorySourceFolder "G:\Documents and Settings" /VisitTimeFilterType 3 /VisitTimeFilterValue 10 /scomma "c:\temp\history.csv"
BrowsingHistoryView.exe /HistorySource 1 /LoadIE 1 /LoadFirefox 0 /LoadChrome 0 /LoadSafari 0 /shtml "c:\temp\history.html"
BrowsingHistoryView.exe /HistorySource 2 /VisitTimeFilterType 4 /VisitTimeFrom "01-01-2011 00:00:00" /VisitTimeTo "01-01-2012 00:00:00" /stab "c:\temp\history.txt"
Translating BrowsingHistoryView to other languages
In order to translate BrowsingHistoryView to other language, follow the instructions below:- Run BrowsingHistoryView with /savelangfile parameter:
BrowsingHistoryView.exe /savelangfile
A file named BrowsingHistoryView_lng.ini will be created in the folder of BrowsingHistoryView utility. - Open the created language file in Notepad or in any other text editor.
- Translate all string entries to the desired language. Optionally, you can also add your name and/or a link to your Web site. (TranslatorName and TranslatorURL values) If you add this information, it'll be used in the 'About' window.
- After you finish the translation, Run BrowsingHistoryView, and all translated
strings will be loaded from the language file.
If you want to run BrowsingHistoryView without the translation, simply rename the language file, or move it to another folder.
License
This utility is released as freeware. You are allowed to freely distribute this utility via floppy disk, CD-ROM, Internet, or in any other way, as long as you don't charge anything for this and you don't sell it or distribute it as a part of commercial product. If you distribute this utility, you must include all files in the distribution package, without any modification !
Disclaimer
The software is provided "AS IS" without any warranty, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. The author will not be liable for any special, incidental, consequential or indirect damages due to loss of data or any other reason.