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Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

bugs.chromium.org

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

#601

Post by asimpletune »

asimpletune wrote: post #50
Klonoar wrote: post #12

Yo, this is... going too far, c'mon now. While sure, www seems odd now, it's still a subdomain and we're inching into territory of obscuring things that matter for small gains in end-user perception that aren't _that_ impactful.

Yeah this is weird. Which users are bothered enough by the leading www enough to justify messing with semantics?

My guess is they’re patiently trying to train users to prepare them for a post-url era. I don’t remember where but I recall hearing the google was trying to replace the standard. Sort of like how Apple has had to retrain people to not think so much in terms of files but in terms of apps.

Just a guess though.

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

#602

Post by hegz »

ehsankia wrote: post #209
fireattack wrote: post #99

I'm ok with hiding "www.", but it also hides "m." which is sometimes very confusing (I once opened a m.facebook.com link and was very puzzled why it uses the mobile site when the URl bar just shows "facebook.com").

Facebook aside, don't the majority of sites show you mobile version by looking at headers. Isn't that the whole reason the "Show desktop version" feature even exists in Chrome, to send the desktop header? Very few sites actually use www. vs m. Clearly, in those cases, people aren't "confused" by the fact that they are seeing a mobile version on www., so other than the fact that you're used to Facebook specifically wo…

Modern websites use the screen width to show you mobile vs desktop view. But before CSS had good support for responsive web design everyone had to create a separate website for mobile and put it on m.website

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

#603

Post by travem »

lalaithion wrote: post #585
UncleMeat wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Arguably, the most sincere problems arise from mixed alphabets with Unicode domains and look-alike characters/glyphs. No way. The most sincere problem is that hostnames do not enforce any binding to a real world identity that users can understand (nobody inspects certs) and that the most trustworthy component of a hostname is the second to the last section (right before ".com"). Humans tend to look at the front of…

The best security change we could make, imo, is rewriting domains so that they look like com.evil.bank.www/now/urls/go/from/most/specific/to/least

You're in good company. Tim Berners-Less said something similar when reflecting on what he would do differently if given the chance:

> Looking back on 15 years or so of development of the Web is there anything you would do differently given the chance? > "I would have skipped on the double slash - there’s no need for it. Also I would have put the domain name in the reverse order - in order of size so, for example, the BCS address would read: http:/uk.org.bcs/members. The last two terms of this example could both be servers if necessary."

From http://www.impactlab.net/2006/03/25/interview-with-tim-berne...

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

#604

Post by chiefalchemist »

com2kid wrote: post #516
lmedinas wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i use Firefox @ work and @home for serious stuff. The only reason i don't use Firefox 100% is due to the Android app which is a lag fest. Mozilla needs to put more resources on Android.

I'm in the opposite boat from you. Firefox on Android is nice, especially thanks to being able to install an ad blocker. Firefox on my desktop literally brings my entire machine to its knees, and destroys performance in all other apps that are open. Pulling that off while not even getting close to maxing out the CPU is rather impressive. :/

Same here. FB chokes FF every other time I open it. My CPU and RAM consumption spikes. I have to close FF and reopen. Sometimes that doesn't work either.

It's annoying and frustrating.

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

#605

Post by talaketu »

baby wrote: post #556
parliament32 wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is the usability improvement from hiding part of the domain name? Maybe we should be hiding ".com" because that's trivial too? Better yet, why show "google" at all if from the page it's clear you're on Google? Might as well just fullscreen the content pane and be done with it.

What is the usability improvement of www?

WWW was absolutely revolutionary.

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

#606

Post by Jedd »

justadudeama wrote: post #512
jake_the_third wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, users expect to type what they see in the address bar, and get the same result every time. Can we even call them address bars anymore? And blaming website owners for working within the bounds of published standards is ridiculous and you know it.

If I asked any non-technical person under the age of 20 the difference between www.google.com and google.com they probably couldn't tell me. Users expect www.example.com to equal example.com. If a website isn't redirecting one to the other, they, are doing something that is incredibly anti-user and it is a good thing that google/apple are forcing them to do it different.

> If I asked any non-technical person under the age of 20 ...

Which is why technical specifications aren't written or maintained by non-technical people.

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

#607

Post by tazard »

stephenc_c_ wrote: post #211
dfabulich wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clicking doesn't reveal the URL. You have to click and use the left arrow key, at which point the protocol and www prefix appear. Just like when Chrome hid the protocol part of the URL, you can even click in the URL bar and copy it without seeing the protocol (or, now, www prefix) at all. I think it results in a confusing experience when you paste it. (Ordinary users will say: "I copied example.com but I pasted https…

Or double-click - basically get into the editing mode of the URL bar.

What other mode would I be trying to access?

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

#608

Post by masswerk »

mrec wrote: post #582
masswerk wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We might even call it "favicon", for the fun of it… :-)

Not sure if serious, but no. Anyone can copy a favicon; the point of an identicon is that it's generated from the domain name, so subverting it would require an attacker to find a hash collision with a visually similar domain.

Sorry, I mistook "that is rendered from the domain" for "rendered from a resource from the domain".

However, teach users to read domain names! If users do not grasp the general concept, e.g., if the supposed identity is just "example" (possibly with some decoration considered insignificant) and not "example.com", how are they supposed to survive? Domains have been around for more than a quarter of a century, the Internet is actually part of our lives… There is no excuse, and there is no sense in pretending that there was no harm in not understanding the basics. That said, there are real ambiguities that have to be addressed.

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

#609

Post by wwweston »

abalone wrote: post #393

> This is a dumb change. No part of a domain should be considered "trivial". As an ISP, we often have to go to great lengths to teach users that "www.domain.com" and "domain.com" are two different domains... What ISPs teach their users anymore these days? Why the heck do we want to go back to that? Time for a modicum of historical perspective. If you care about usability this is clearly an improvement. This is part o…

> They don't see the positives because they're technically advanced enough and don't benefit from simplification (or so they think).

I'm noticing despite the invocation of vague concepts of progress and usability... you haven't articulated any particular case for how this represents either. No model for why it's simpler or more usable.

"Safari does this too" or imprecise aspersions about the supposed "whining and griping from the more technically advanced folks" doesn't really cut it.

I could guess that what you mean is "oh, if you can omit something and yet it's implicitly understood, obviously that's a simplification," though that's obviously a guess. If I've misunderstood, well, there's counterexample #1, to get a little meta. If I've managed to guess correctly, the broad topic of language and notation is a fairly rich well as to the potential for ambiguity or outright miscommunicated meaning when things are moved from consistent and explicitly denoted syntax to implicit syntax. Or examples for when the implicitly understood isn't particularly burdensome to use or even require in some cases.

"the world didn't end" .... lots of bad ideas that make things marginally worse don't end the world.

"the principle of it all" Again, this is a pretty vague and imprecise charge. Do you understand what the particular principles people are registering their objection on? If so, why not name them and respond?

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