History and navigation information in a computer application are managed by establishing a global context that can communicate with multiple resources, each of which resides in an associated local context. State information from one or more of the local contexts is communicated to the global context, and global navigation information (for example, defining a drop-down history list or back/forward button states) is generated based on the communicated state information. Using the global navigation information, a user of the computer application can move among previously visited resources in a global manner.