If there is any rhyme or reason to how the Location Bar retains URLs, I sure would like to know. I’m running Netscape 4.7.
It isn’t simply a list of all the URLs you’ve been to lately. It mostly fails to show ones you’ve recently seen, while it seems to hold others for weeks on end. At random?
Not entirely at random. I noticed early on that if you type in an address and hit “Enter,” it tends to stick in the Location Bar history. But that is not at all reliable!
It often retains URLs from pages I got through clicking links. While it also fails to keep URLs I deliberately type in there over and over. I wanted to keep all the SDMB forums, plus the forum index page and search page, in the Location Bar to use as super-shortcuts. I keep putting them in there by hand, but usually they stick only after several tries. Then they drop out unless I keep accessing them from there like every day. Meanwhile thread URLs that I didn’t put in there, only clicked links to, stick forever.
It’s like it has a mind of my own, and mostly prefers to thwart my will, except sometimes when it acquiesces. Either that or it’s just dumb and not as smart as it wants you to think.