How to clear browsers (IE, Firefox, Opera, Chrome) history using JavaScript or Java except from browser itself?

Question

How to clear browsers (IE, Firefox, Opera, Chrome) history using JavaScript or Java, except clearing it from browser itself?

Answer 1

In short it's not possible, sandboxing prevents browsers and the scripts/applets they run to modify or even create any files except for a few narrow cases. Javascripts and Java applets being allowed to clear other websites cookies or site content in your cache would not be desirable.

Answer 2

The document.location data in browsers is generally inaccessible to scripts, because allowing access would give any given site access to your entire browsing history. At most you can do a few simple manipulations, like "go to history entry #37" or "go back one page". But you can't do "what was the address of the page in history entry #23".

Most banking sites will use javascript links to prevent a click history from being built up. They'll do document.location.replace" to kill the last history entry (the current page) and replace it with the address of a new page. It in effect removes the "back" option to go back a page, because the previous page (as far as the browsing history is concerned) is now the new page.