Quick question about how WikiTreeTurbo works

Question

So whenever I visit the webpage of a WikiTree profile, WikiTreeTurbo adds it to the "quick search" list that it stores.  

Does it have a maximum number of profiles that can be stored?  If so, does it remove the one that was accessed the longest amount of time ago so the newest one can be stored?

If not, that would mean that it is an infinite list, right?  Is there a way to clear that list / remove profiles from it manually?  It's perfectly fine if none of those things are possible, I'm just curious about how the extension works.

Also a side question, can the icons to minimize the branches on descendant lists be changed / relocated?  They are really big and make it a little hard / confusing to read the chart, because they push the names and birth-death of the individuals several spaces to the right, kind of putting them in a different "column", so to speak, as other members of the same generation, if that makes sense.  It is mostly noticeable when there are siblings in the chart where some have children and some don't.

  Again, not a big issue, as I can probably get used to seeing the charts in turbo's style the more often I see it.

I love the extension, I'm just a little too curious for my own good.  I guess that's why I'm into genealogy. ;)

Comments

Well! Learn something new everyday. Until you posted this query, DB, I never knew what that little message was when I went to a profile.

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Just curious, but what browser are you guys using?

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Chrome.

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I'm also using Chrome

Answer 1

If you go to a profile and turn 'developer mode' on (use ctrl-shift-j), you will see  a panel open up with a menu bar at the top.  Select 'Application' to get the proper context and look at the left side for a section named 'Storage.'  The first item should be 'Local Storage' with an entry 'https://www.wikitree.com.' This entry contains the wikitreeturbo_watchlist variable. You can clear this variable if desired.

Each variable is a string and the maximum size depends not only on which browser but also the version of the browser (see this somewhat dated comparison: http://dev-test.nemikor.com/web-storage/support-test/)  More modern browsers are upgrading to 10MB capacities but keep in mind that UTF-16 is used for characters meaning 10MB of storage only contains 5 million characters.  [The word 'only' seems incongruent to those of us that remember 16K mainframe computers.]

As to whether the programmer reacts to a full condition and takes special action, you would need to ask the developer.  It is possible that he simply assume a watchlist will always have enough space. Not unreasonable given that WIkiTree frowns on any member having a watchlist of over 5,000 profiles.