GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 145386
Add a "private browsing" feature
Last modified: 2012-06-01 03:25:51 UTC
See this page for details: http://makeashorterlink.com/?C411228B8 The dialog pretty much speaks for itself.
Yep, this is A Good Idea(tm) :) Also see http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/safari.html
Some questions / notes: - Would this be global, or only affect one window / one tab ? - With disabled history, should back/forward still work ? - Cookies are a problem, we probably don't want to delete existing ones, but need not accept new ones and need not send existing ones to servers... probably needs mozilla support. - Cache disabling seems already possible with moz api
Mass reassigning of Epiphany bugs to epiphany-maint@b.g.o
From http://macs.about.com/od/osx/qt/safari_private.htm " When Private Browsing is switched on: 1. Web pages are not added to the History 2. Items are automatically removed from the Downloads window 3. Information (including names and passwords) is not saved for Autofill 4. Searches are not added to the pop-up menu in the Google search box " To respond to comment #2: - This would be global - only history saving would be disabled, back/forward should still work
It would be nice to have a gconf-key to seet this as default behavior. This would be really helpful in our internet-cafe. We like to use epiphany, but couldn't use it because of privacy issues.
In version 2.14.0, there's --private-instance startup argument which will run the browser with a pristine profile (you'll need to rm -rf /tmp/epiphany-$random after the program quits manually for now). I think that can be used to emulate this and we do want to evolve this into a full private browsing mode later.
*** Bug 355719 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
For reference: http://live.gnome.org/Epiphany/FeatureDesign/PrivateBrowsing
Bug 462447 has a patch for disabling saving history to disk (which is a first step to a private mode).
Now that profile dirs are cleaned after being used, can this be considered finished? I recall that cookie handling is a different matter (that's the only thing left for on the fly private mode I think).
(In reply to comment #10) > Now that profile dirs are cleaned after being used, can this be considered > finished? > I recall that cookie handling is a different matter (that's the only thing left > for on the fly private mode I think). I guess we'd just be missing a way to access "epiphany -p" from epiphany itself, and a way to differentiate normal ephy windows from private ephy windows.
Actually, this should do much more than just load a new private ephy if we want the feature to match the safari one, because you'd be losing bookmarks, history, saved passwords, etc.
Is there any progress on this issue? I think a private browsing mode is a very important feature for web browsers nowadays!
*** Bug 620703 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Having private mode available as a command line option is nice, but it really should be accessible from the UI as well. What other tasks are remaining? Should they be split into separate "Depends on" bugs?
No kidding. Every other browser which supports private browsing has a way from activating it from within the GUI. In fact, due to the lack thereof, I wasn't even aware that Epiphany supported private mode until I did some googling and found this bug. At the very least, a epiphany-private.desktop menu item should be installed for this purpose, with the following differences over the main one: Name=Epiphany (Private Mode) GenericName=Web Browser (Private Mode) X-GNOME-FullName=Epiphany Web Browser (Private Mode) Comment=Browse the web privately Exec=epiphany -p %U This would go a long way to 1) letting users know that the feature exists, and 2) giving a GUI-method of using it.
- Would this be global, or only affect one window / one tab ? One window, with the ability to add more - With disabled history, should back/forward still work ? yes, just clear the history on window close see: https://bugs.launchpad.net/epiphany-browser/+bug/343395 "Private browsing mode like Firefox or incognito mode as Chrome calls it, is extremely useful. Being able to enable this on a per-tab basis is important as well. When in this stealth mode, browser and download history is not saved and cookies are deleted when the tab is closed. There should be some visual to indicate private browsing as well. More than one instance should also work for example so that a user could sign ento three accounts of the same service simultaneously. This is still lacking from Chromium and Firefox." See also bug 667450
I think Epiphany has supported private browsing through the -p parameter for a while now. Could someone confirm that this bug can be closed?
As dicsucced above, a GUI is missing
Marking dupe of bug #676914, where a patch has been attached. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 676914 ***