Here is my idea for the history visualization for mozilla firefox.

(It is a Low-Fidelity Prototype, as most of the elements used are just place holders and to build up the idea)

The whole design is divided into 3 columns:

column 1: this column has a time-line, showing the history in form of a graph. user can select the part of the history by increasing or decreasing the selected area(shown in blue). it also shows the bookmarks(stars) and downloads(green dots) on the time line to get the contextual history related to a particular bookmark or download. hovering over the ‘star’ will also show the thumb of that bookmark.

column 2: this column shows the domains visited within the selected regions on the history timeline. big thumbnails facilitate fast skimming through the Domain list.

Column 3: this column contains the children of the corresponding domain. each children has a check box against it and displays the title of the page. After each entry in the list 1-2 tags(in light gray) are suggested from the ‘Delicious’ in addition to the user defined tags, to suggest users some more famous & widely used links by the internet community. each link will also contain a small thumbnail pic(32×32) to help in recognition of the previously visited link.

Sessions:
User can create sessions and access them anywhere anytime, and also automate them.
for example user can automate that every time he opens firefox, his email and a social networking site opens for him. or if he is a movie buff, every Friday/Saturday his fav movie review/ticketing sites open for him. or on beginning of every months sites he needs to pay bills on opens for him (all these can be further automated by making the sessions more intelligent i.e. picking up sites from the history).

Filters:
filters can refine the history by just one click. for example if user wants to see all the google searces he has performed he can click on the google search filter. he can create his own filters according to his needs.

Please comment your thoughts…