Internet Explorer 7 to have history flush feature

Clean slate option introduced. By Jeremy Kirk

Microsoft's forthcoming Internet Explorer 7 browser will have a thorough flush feature that clears its history and all associated files stored after a website is accessed.

In IE 6, a user has to spend lots of time trying to expunge the information stored after a website has been visited, says Uche Enuha, a programme manager on the IE user experience team, on the company's browser blog.

The new "delete browsing history" feature under the "tools" menu will be able to wipe out five major data categories, including temporary internet files, cookies, history, form data and passwords, Enuha says. A user can delete all of those at once or can individually choose which ones to wipe through the "delete browsing history" panel, Enuha says.

The feature goes deeper than a novice user would likely pursue. For example, deleting files from the temporary internet files folder will also clean out attachments stored by the Outlook email program in that folder, Enuha says.

A beta version of IE 7 has been out for Windows XP Service Pack 2 and an enhanced beta version is available for the beta 1 version of Windows Vista, according to Microsoft.