Suggested Improvements & Fixes for Searching & Search Engine Keyword Use with Enhanced History Chrome Extension

[PowerWeb5]

I've summarized a few suggestions and issues identified relating to searching history with Enhanced History extension for Chrome below:

Summarized Issues & Requests:

1. Use "h" keyword (instead of "history") and/or allow this to be easily customized from within extension settings, as it's impossible to change this under
2. Make possible for users to create their own search engine keyword (like "h") and even bookmark common search pages by:
   • Having the search keyword shown in URL in address bar, changing based on what the user enters into the Search box (like is the case for standard History page, so that users know what URL to use).
3. Make it clear that this extension registers a new search engine with the "history" keyword, stating this in Extension (Store) description page and Search Tips.
   • Needed as this capability is unknown for many, and that can prevent others spending much time trying to identify the URL (despite issues preventing that, detailed further below) to add it themselves (eg for "h" keyword)
4. Support the same non-enhanced history URL pattern of chrome://history/all?q=%22%s%22 so
   • Needed so existing search engine entries (eg. if adding for default History page earlier) will still work as expected, vs. just breaking that as is currently the case.
5. Have the search query (even if entered via address bar) auto populated into the Search box in the resulting page.
6. Middle click to open links for Enhanced History search result pages opens a broken search page searching for "p2" for 2nd page of results, for example.
7. Add support for title: and url: search keywords to limit searching to title or url only (and show these in Search Tips)
8. Consistently show either endless results (with "Search deeper" button) or Paged results, instead of randomly showing Paged vs. Endless in different cases as occurs now (possibly sometimes shows pages if click on Search side tab and/or in other cases? Unsure as even then very inconsistent)
9. Often "Search deeper" does not show up
   • Such as even when I search for the same thing a 2nd time (after searching for something different in between) without closing and reopening the history page (like seen in screenshot further below)
10. Regex search results in HTML markup showing in title at top of page like:
    Searching <ul class="tags"><li>{What you searched for}<li><ul>
11. If you middle-click a page number (with paged results) to open in a new tab like for the following for Page 2 when searching for Google, which results in an invalid page (searches for "Google/p2" instead of just "Google")
    • chrome-extension://blpnkmdkoapbdhpmemnaikpbhajknmdb/index.html#search/Google/p2
    • Combined with lack of search term shown in URL (like native Search) this makes it nearly impossible for users to figure out what the URL should be to add their own search engine keyword

Workaround for just 1 Issue (adding "h" search engine keyword)

I did discover a temporary workaround that users can use to add Enhanced History search as a Search Engine in Chromium-based browsers using the following search engine URL pattern:

chrome-extension://blpnkmdkoapbdhpmemnaikpbhajknmdb/index.html#search/%s

Though without looking at search code or much trial and error others likely won't be able to identify this, due to issues with lack of showing URL or even invalid page URLs as detailed above.

Note that even for Chromium-based Edge (Developer channel) you must still use chrome-extension:// even though the browser shows it as extension://, otherwise redirection errors occur resulting in extension://extension:// or similar invalid URLs.

You can add this for "h" keyword (for Chrome or Edge Chrome) at:

chrome://settings/searchEngines
edge://settings/searchEngines

Auto registered search engines like Enhanced History cannot have there search keyword edited, making this even more important that it's possible to easily figure out what this URL is and/or allow editing the keyword via extension settings.

However, there is no way for users to determine that other than looking through the code or many random guessing attempts, since, unlike basic history and many search engines the URL shown in address bar doesn't change after performing a search.

Also, even that fails to show what was searched via keyword in the "Search title or url" box for easy tweaking or clarity.

Screenshots of Issues

Sometimes shows Search deeper / endless loading history search results:

Paged results being shown instead

Middle click on result page number opens invalid search page:

URL for Search in Standard History:

Search Deeper shown after first search

Search deeper fails to show after I search a 2nd time after (for something different, then same search again) once history page is already open

Regex results in HTML markup showing in title at top of page like:
Searching

• {What you searched for}
•