Surprised to see not a single mention of Brave [1] in this large thread of comments as an alternative browser. It's not the best for development, but for casual browsing it's great. Brave blocks all ads and trackers.
Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL
681–690 of 919 posts
Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL
#682Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Many people can't tell you the difference between a modem, router, OS, browser, or website." They don't care, nor should they. How many people know how many spark plugs are in their car? You're correct. We, the more tech-literate, take too much for granted; and most experiences and learning curves are too far over the head of the "average" user. It's not them. It's us.
Do you seriously not know how many spark plugs are in your car? It's the same as the number of cylinders. How could you not know that? They absolutely should care. They should be aware that when they store things in "the cloud" they are not stored on their device and are visible to third parties. They should understand what encryption is and how to use it. "I don't know what I'm doing, and I didn't get the result I w…
I don't even know how many cylinders I have!* Why should I care? Put key in. Press gas down. Car goes forward. Works for me.
"How do you not know that?"
Why would I need to know this? Why do I need to know what a cylinder is to drive? Is this even a logical question with electric cars now?
You are arguing what should be vs. what is.
* Well, I don't currently drive but I couldn't tell you with 100% accuracy the number of cylinders my last car had.
Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL
#683Lots of people saying this is for the benefit of non-technical users. For me, this is a minor inconvenience, precisely because I'm technically capable/interested enough to handle the inconsistency. But this kind of stuff (and I am speaking somewhat generally here) tends to frustrate me, precisely when I'm trying to educate or deal with a non-technical user in some capacity where it happens to matter. I can't just tel…
I wholeheartedly agree with this. There are two sides of the debate now. One side says that the machines should be clever enough to guess the user's intention and go around of their mistakes, while the other side says that the machines should stay as dumb and square. The question is about who is handling the complexity of this world, and in my opinion it should be often left to the human, not to the machines.
The worse outcome may be, if there's an ambiguity involved and the smart system takes precedent, but occasionally happens to take the wrong route – and suppresses any feedback for the user to intervene or even notice. Which is much, where we have arrived by this. I guess, collateral damage has become a matter of everyday life.
Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL
#684Earlier quoted context omitted.
What you may be surprised to learn is that Chrome isn't just stripping "www." from the beginning of the subdomain. "subdomain.www.domain.com" displays as "subdomain.domain.com"
Isn't this a security risk? What if someone malicious takes control of the www.com domain?
This entire change is a security risk - there is no guarantee that any subdomain has the same owner as the primary, and that's not even getting into subdomain hijacking.
Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL
#685Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Many people can't tell you the difference between a modem, router, OS, browser, or website." They don't care, nor should they. How many people know how many spark plugs are in their car? You're correct. We, the more tech-literate, take too much for granted; and most experiences and learning curves are too far over the head of the "average" user. It's not them. It's us.
Do you seriously not know how many spark plugs are in your car? It's the same as the number of cylinders. How could you not know that? They absolutely should care. They should be aware that when they store things in "the cloud" they are not stored on their device and are visible to third parties. They should understand what encryption is and how to use it. "I don't know what I'm doing, and I didn't get the result I w…
Some engines have two per cylinder :)
Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL
#686Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you seriously not know how many spark plugs are in your car? It's the same as the number of cylinders. How could you not know that? They absolutely should care. They should be aware that when they store things in "the cloud" they are not stored on their device and are visible to third parties. They should understand what encryption is and how to use it. "I don't know what I'm doing, and I didn't get the result I w…
Some engines have two per cylinder :)
I find this interesting. The parallels up to this point. My intent is not to pick fun on anyone but to just relook at the conversation just had.
We're talking about users not understanding the technology they use daily.
jwalton, in trying to give an example with spark plugs, allowed a more knowledgeable user or practitioner, mirimir, to give a more technically-correct description.
It seems to echo the main problem we are discussing in which users of a technology are not the same as those who design or know the nitty-gritty details of that technology.
Assumptions learned from day to day use in that technology (all cylinders have one plug, the google box is the only box I need) can so easily be proven incorrect when speaking to an actual expert in that field.
Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL
#687Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL
#688Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you seriously not know how many spark plugs are in your car? It's the same as the number of cylinders. How could you not know that? They absolutely should care. They should be aware that when they store things in "the cloud" they are not stored on their device and are visible to third parties. They should understand what encryption is and how to use it. "I don't know what I'm doing, and I didn't get the result I w…
I don't even know how many cylinders I have!* Why should I care? Put key in. Press gas down. Car goes forward. Works for me. "How do you not know that?" Why would I need to know this? Why do I need to know what a cylinder is to drive? Is this even a logical question with electric cars now? You are arguing what should be vs. what is. * Well, I don't currently drive but I couldn't tell you with 100% accuracy the number…
I guess, the simile isn't entirely on the same level. You may not know how many cylinders there are in your car, like you may not know the number of cores in the CPU of your computer. They are both essentially hidden.
But you do know how many pedals there are in the car and probably, how many switches there are for the lights, and that the wiper has different steps of speed etc. You even manage to control these few elements, because they are the user facing elements your dealing with, the interface. There's no need to unify the pedals into a single one and to have the car to decide, whether it means accelerate, break, or clutch. Doing so would alienate you from the very task of driving, from what it means and what risks are involved. Taking these few controls away from you in favor of an ambiguous I-know-it-all-so-you-should't-care interface of ultimate convenience would probably not increase the security of operations.
On the other hand, we may expect you, as a driver, to know that there is a engine, that this is why the car moves, that it needs gas/petrol in order to run, that deacceleration is proportional to speed, etc.
Why is it so different with anything involving a computer? Is it, because we're telling them so?
Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL
#689Considering a subdomain "trivial" is ridiculous... there's a difference between "www.example.com" and "example.com". Not only can they serve different sites, they can even have different DNS records! It seems that "m." is also considered a trivial subdomain. So when a user clicks a link to a "m.facebook.com" uri, they'll be confused why FB looks different when the browser reports it's on "facebook.com". I sincerely h…
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…
> There are also legal concerns with catch-all domains in some countries.
Wow, really? Could you expand a little? I tried to search but all I got was catch-all mail addresses and no legal issues. Thanks!
Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL
#690Earlier quoted context omitted.
My admittedly anecdotal evidence suggest that they do not. From my other comment: I worked as tech support for a large org (300+ users) most of my career and have dealt with most types of users. I've only seen them interact with the address bar in one of two ways: explorer shortcuts on the desktop/browser bookmarks (few) or stick-it notes on the monitor or keyboard (many).
If you count only the people who require tech support then of course you're only going to see the people who require tech support. But they're not the only users. Developers and techies are users too and they're much less likely to call tech support in general. This harms them far more than it helps the people who need help.
And this move was made under the guise of improving ux for normal users and not users who know how subdomains work. What's the point you're trying to make?