deleting IE history using VB.Net

[Ted]

is there an example of how one would go about selectively deleting items in
IE's history based on URL names using VB.NET? i have checked every resource
i know and come up short.

[Jani Järvinen [MVP]]

Ted,

is there an example of how one would go about selectively deleting items
in
IE's history based on URL names using VB.NET?

I'm sorry, but I don't think there are any examples available because what
you want to achieve probably isn't possible. Well, you could in theory
reverse engineer Internet Explorer and see how it manipulates the history
list, but this would both be a violation of the EULA and very difficult.

However, if you are using .NET 2.0 and the WebBrowser control, then you
could build your own web browser with VB.NET that would not let the user see
the history. But even with this solution, I don't think you can *stop* IE
from building up that history list for you.

Hope this gives you food for thought.

--
Regards,

Mr. Jani Järvinen
C# MVP
Helsinki, Finland
ja***@removethis.dystopia.fi
http://www.saunalahti.fi/janij/

[Ted]

jani, thanks for the response. i'm having trouble comprehending that this is
an impossible task. ie's history is available thru windows explorer under
c:\documents and settings\[user name]\local settings\history and items can
easily be deleted. for some reason, however, when you use system.io to
navigate that directory it appears empty to .net. there are at least a few
applications out there that delete all history but i'm just not sure how
they're doing it. any ideas? i did find some code to clear IE's cache and
it required several api calls. anyway, i would appreciate any comments. tia!

"Jani Järvinen [MVP]" wrote:

Ted,

is there an example of how one would go about selectively deleting items
in
IE's history based on URL names using VB.NET?

I'm sorry, but I don't think there are any examples available because what
you want to achieve probably isn't possible. Well, you could in theory
reverse engineer Internet Explorer and see how it manipulates the history
list, but this would both be a violation of the EULA and very difficult.

However, if you are using .NET 2.0 and the WebBrowser control, then you
could build your own web browser with VB.NET that would not let the user see
the history. But even with this solution, I don't think you can *stop* IE
from building up that history list for you.

Hope this gives you food for thought.

--
Regards,

Mr. Jani Järvinen
C# MVP
Helsinki, Finland
ja***@removethis.dystopia.fi
http://www.saunalahti.fi/janij/