WebKit history allows for only one history item per URL

• Component: History
• Status: NEW ---

[Simone Manganelli]

When visiting a URL that is already in WebKit's history, WebKit updates the "last visited" date for the URL to the current time, and discards the previous "last visited" date.  This makes it tough to find pages temporally, if you know around the time that you accessed them but do not remember anything else about the page.  In these cases, if you've visited the page more recently than you remember, you will not be able to find the page you're looking for.


Steps to Reproduce:

1.  Open WebKit and visit http://homepage.mac.com/simx/test-ctf-flash.html .

2.  Open WebKit history.  Observe that a history item has been created for this URL for today.

3.  Wait a day.

4.  Open WebKit and visit http://homepage.mac.com/simx/test-ctf-flash.html again.

5.  Open WebKit history.  Note that there is no longer any record of you having visited this URL yesterday, only today.


Expected Results: I expect WebKit's history to allow for multiple history items per URL.  (At the very least, allow one history item per URL *per day*.)  This is an accurate look at the user's history, because URLs are often visited more than once.  If a user is trying to find a URL in time, this makes it easier to locate the correct page, as well.

Actual Results: WebKit destroys user expectations by simply updating the "last visited" date for URLs when they are accessed again.

Regression: This issue has existed for all versions of Safari and WebKit.

[Mark Rowe (bdash)]

<rdar://problem/6818422>