Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL • Hacker News Board

Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#561

Post by joan_lm » Thu, Sep 06, 2018, 11:40 PM UTC

sofaofthedamned wrote: post #537

ergothus wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"www" was not a marketing trick, it was legitimately a different domain, by convention. General users never understood it, so companies started to have to add it to match their weird expectations. To associate a base domain with a company identity happens to be true MOST of the time, but isnt actually true. Plus, foo.example.com follows different security rules than bar.example.com (CORS, certs, etc) The problem here…

There was never a requirement for www. to be anything other than the bare domain for most people. It became useful because it was synonymous with being a web thing right back when people hardly knew what the web was. This was serendipity, which turned out not to be serendipitous when people had to write it on signs / read it out on an advert etc. I see no reason now to associate www. with the web version of your serv…

Sure, perhaps there is no reason to associate www. But the issue here is a browser showing an incorrect url.

Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#562

Post by baby » Thu, Sep 06, 2018, 11:40 PM UTC

wingworks wrote: post #474

nixpulvis wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No this is Google (and others) attempting to fix confusion caused by developers making systems that are hard to understand for users. Nothing is stopping developers from redirecting or setting up DNS to make the two domains go to the same place. I personally feel like any negative user experience should be addressed by the developers of the website, not the browser. Meanwhile I'm sure there are people out there who w…

Exactly, thank you! I think first and foremost the browser should be clear and easy to use for the general user, not an easy to debug frontend for devs, if we do that the browser will be a mess. Devs know where to look to see what the real address is if they get reports of there site not working, and can then fix the issue on their end. It's not like the issue isn't something that you can't change on the server end.…

Not sure why you are getting downvotes but I agree with you here. I think this change is going to benefit both technical and non technical users. How many websites make the mistake of not handling www and non-www the same? Or having a valid certificate for both domains? It's not just a pain for the non techies

Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#563

Post by pests » Thu, Sep 06, 2018, 11:41 PM UTC

pwg wrote: post #540

jrowley wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many users never use the url bar. They just 'Google' for websites they want to access and follow the results.

It is worse than that for some users. I've seen actual users that type/paste real url's into google's search box in order to go to the site. They actually had no idea that the bar at the top of the browser that said "google" (since they/someone set their default homepage to google) was a place where they could delete "google.com" and type/paste the url they wanted to visit there instead to actually get to the site th…

You seem shocked at this with word usage like "actual users", "real url's" and "actually no idea"

But how are we to expect users to know any better until general technology literacy improves?

Many people can't tell you the difference between a modem, router, OS, browser, or website.

I remember years ago sitting down with my elderly grandmother trying to show her how to use a desktop...

We are too close to our work so everything is familiar and easy.

Even the concept of moving the mouse on a table to represent moving the mouse cursor on the screen is something we take for granted.

Tell someone who's never used a mouse before to double click something to open it. You have to start way back earlier at the concept of which physical button on the mouse to use.

This turned more into a general rant about how we overestimate regular users but I'ts been on my mind for awhile.

Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#564

Post by magicalist » Thu, Sep 06, 2018, 11:41 PM UTC

Donzo wrote: post #389

masswerk wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is certainly subverting the domain name system. I can't see the value or gain in security by this. (If you want to put focus on the domain, then display the host-part with less contrast, i.e. grey, but don't hide any potentially vital information. Otherwise, put out a RFC, defining "www" as a substitute for "*", or a zero-value atom, in order to guarantee consistent behavior.) Edit: There are also legal concerns…

The reason why Google is doing this is because they are slowly trying to do away with URLs, as direct traffic is probably their greatest untapped segment. Google is trying to get users to go through their doorway pages, which is exactly the kind of thing for which they penalize publishers. Pay attention to when you enter direct addresses, let's say from a device/media subscription authorization page. The autosuggesti…

> they are slowly trying to do away with URLs

They might be changing how they want to display them, but "do away with" is unsupported by the article:

> But this will mean big changes in how and when Chrome displays URLs. We want to challenge how URLs should be displayed and question it as we’re figuring out the right way to convey identity.

https://www.wired.com/story/google-wants-to-kill-the-url/

Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#565

Post by stcredzero » Thu, Sep 06, 2018, 11:42 PM UTC

baby wrote: post #559

stcredzero wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you care about usability this is clearly an improvement. The cost/benefit doesn't work out. It's a usability improvement, but it comes with a huge cost, where many, many sites have the fundamental function of a URL -- that of an address/specifier across the internet -- basically broken. The person who implemented this change either didn't work out the cost, or decided they didn't care. Everyone is hyperventilating…

You are overestimating the cost. This is going to help kill the www on the long run.

Just how much is www costing the world? I think compromising the function of URLs is going to be much more than whether or not there's a www in one.

Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#566

Post by meowface » Thu, Sep 06, 2018, 11:43 PM UTC

markovbot wrote: post #456

jlarocco wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it matters, quite a bit actually. My expectation as a user is that the URL I see in the bar is the URL of the site I'm visiting. If it's not accurate, then why show it at all?

Because the second level domain is far more important than the subdomain. The second level. www.example.com and example.com usually have the same contents, but are always controlled by the same group.

Exactly; wish I had added that to my original point.

Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#567

Post by tazard » Thu, Sep 06, 2018, 11:45 PM UTC

abalone wrote: post #539

hrez wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

user1 - https://citibank.com.sg doesn't work for me user2 - it's fine, here is a screenshot of it working (while showing "beautified" https://www.citibank.com.sg ) how is that not confusing?

If this is the worst example anyone can come up with, debugging a misconfigured site while relying exclusively on screenshots of beautified URLs, then I think it proves my point. There will always be tradeoffs in advancing usability. This is objectively a small one. The problem is the unstated lack of appreciation for the value of usability improvements, because it's usually a more technically sophisticated person cr…

How is having to "just know" that you have to type www to get that page to load, despite it being presented without www a step forward for usability for technically unsophisticated people? It just seems confusing to me. I get that it looks "cleaner" but I am having a hard time figuring out how it makes anyone's life easier, or how it actually makes the web more usable.

Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#568

Post by stcredzero » Thu, Sep 06, 2018, 11:46 PM UTC

abalone wrote: post #531

stcredzero wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you care about usability this is clearly an improvement. The cost/benefit doesn't work out. It's a usability improvement, but it comes with a huge cost, where many, many sites have the fundamental function of a URL -- that of an address/specifier across the internet -- basically broken. The person who implemented this change either didn't work out the cost, or decided they didn't care. Everyone is hyperventilating…

Again you are shamelessly arguing "the principle of it all" without actual real world examples of problems.. Cite some real problems and we can have a more productive discussion. It doesn't help to falsely equate hiding "www." with corrupting phone numbers.

Cite some real problems and we can have a more productive discussion.

Already cited elsewhere.

It doesn't help to falsely equate hiding "www." with corrupting phone numbers.

It's a valid comparison. Both are specifiers. It's the same sort of shenanigans with poorly planned "abbreviated" phone extension dialing and outside number prefixes in my company's office causing wrong numbers and accidental 911 dialing.

Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#569

Post by baby » Thu, Sep 06, 2018, 11:46 PM UTC

ozfive wrote: post #43

This and many other changes over a course of a short period of time have caused me to go to Firefox exclusively now. I heard Firefox is going to stop third party cookie tracking altogether. Why not give Google the big finger and use a different browser? Vote with your cold hard actions if you feel so strongly about something.

Firefox is a better browser due to tree style tabs. But it is noticeably slower.

Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#570

Post by meowface » Thu, Sep 06, 2018, 11:47 PM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #398

meowface wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's added visual noise that 99% of end users don't care about and don't need to care about.

This is just going in a circle. If they don't care about it then it makes no difference. A few characters in an address bar that they pay no attention to is not significant noise. Meanwhile the people that do care have less information.

They don't need to care about checking whether it's there or not or seeing it at all. But in a general sense, users do care about reduced clutter and aesthetics, and this is a way of improving aesthetics and creating a more consistent URL bar. It's a tiny bit more consistency and a tiny bit less clutter, but it's not nothing.

The users who truly care can just click the URL bar. (Someone said you also have to press the left arrow, which if true seems like a bad decision. I would agree the full URL should always be visible whenever the cursor focus is in the URL bar.)