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Adding A History To Your Browser

Adding A History To Your Browser, Working with a browsing history in VB.NET

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Magic_Man

2 Apr, 2009 - 04:42 PM

Post #1

There are some great browser tutorials here but something I haven't seen in any of them is how to add a way to save the user's history. I had to figure the process out myself and it was a nightmare but fortunately, I've decided to share my knowledge with my fellow beginners. This is my first tutorial so please forgive me if it's not perfect.

First, you'll need a browser. If you haven't made one, try http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/showtopic45487.htm for a nice walkthrough.

The first thing to do is to add a setting where you can save the history after the program closes. To do this, click Project, and then (Your App Name) Properties. Locate the Settings tab. For our example, we'll name it History. Our type will be System.Collections.Specialized.StringCollection. Leave the Scope set to User and we will set the value with our code.

Next, we'll need to add some code that will save the browsed pages to My.Settings.History. To do this, we add a line in the codeblock for the Browser_Navigated event.

CODE

Private Sub Browser_Navigated(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.WebBrowserNavigatedEventArgs) Handles Browser.Navigated

        My.Settings.History.Add(Browser.Url.ToString)

    End Sub

Now that our browser can save its history, we need to give it a way to load the existing history. I used a seperate form for the history with a listbox docked within it as it's a very simple way to manage the collection.

CODE

Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load

            ListBox1.DataSource = My.Settings.History

    End Sub

The last thing we need for our history is a way to browse to an item when it's clicked.

CODE

Private Sub ListBox1_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles ListBox1.Click

Main.Browser.Navigate(ListBox1.SelectedItem)

End Sub

You can also add a button with the following code to empty the history.

CODE

My.Settings.History.Clear()

I hope this will be helpful to anyone with the same problem I had.

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nritzau

2 Jun, 2009 - 03:19 AM

Post #2

QUOTE(Magic_Man @ 2 Apr, 2009 - 04:42 PM)

Next, we'll need to add some code that will save the browsed pages to My.Settings.History. To do this, we add a line in the codeblock for the Browser_Navigated event.

CODE

Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load

            ListBox1.DataSource = My.Settings.History

    End Sub

The last thing we need for our history is a way to browse to an item when it's clicked.

CODE

Private Sub ListBox1_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles ListBox1.Click

Main.Browser.Navigate(ListBox1.SelectedItem)

End Sub

You can also add a button with the following code to empty the history.

CODE

My.Settings.History.Clear()

I hope this will be helpful to anyone with the same problem I had.

Thanks for that tutorial that was precise and simple really good job. It helped me

VB.Terry

1 Sep, 2009 - 10:52 AM

Post #3

This is the best tut for making a history in a web browser i've ever seen thanks dude

MysteriousFeez

21 Sep, 2009 - 02:25 PM

Post #4

Thanks i never thought of doing this but before i just had my history go to a folder path that shows all you history for all your webbrowsers. But the only bad thing is, you cant do this for tabbed webbrowsers which use the CType thing.

This post has been edited by MysteriousFeez: 21 Sep, 2009 - 02:38 PM