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Google adds experimental setting to hide full URLs in Chrome 85 address bar

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Re: Google adds experimental setting to hide full URLs in Chrome 85 address bar

#181

Post by toyg »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #147
gspr wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Next step: an "education campaign" to tell people that that part of the web is "insecure". In fact you should only get any content from a handful of domains. And in non-net-neutrality jurisdictions, the ISPs will start offering packages that work with pre-approved domains only. And since it'll be enough for 90% people, it'll work. I hope I'm just being alarmist.

This already kind of happens in Firefox. If you have a non public certificate authority, when you visit a site signed by that CA it says that it's not verified by an authority known to Firefox. I don't know if there is a way to "bless" such an authority once it's added to the trust store.

? If it’s added to the trust store, it should be blessed. Note that this is the FF store, not the Windows one.

Re: Google adds experimental setting to hide full URLs in Chrome 85 address bar

#182

Post by gsich »

chrisdirkis wrote: post #103
cletus wrote: post #94

Another phrase I live by: "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions." There will be some VP of Product or Engineering buried deep in the bureaucracy who is pushing this, deciding with no evidence (or, worse, lots of evidence to the contrary; believe me this happens) that it is the "users who are wrong" [1]. It now takes something like 4 taps to get to the point where I can correct or otherwise edit the URL in m…

I'm not sure how I feel about the proposed (anti-?)feature, but in what way is this "SJW nonsense"?

I doubt that any sane technician would opt for showing the user less information. So the decision must be from someone else, someone who has no clue about how a URL works. So because that person doesn't know about URLs, nobody should know about ULRs.

Re: Google adds experimental setting to hide full URLs in Chrome 85 address bar

#184

Post by Vinnl »

arexxbifs wrote: post #125
0xy wrote: post #101

I disagree with the decision strongly, but I'm a developer and probably a "power user". A casual user might not even know what a URL is. Do you know there's a staggering amount of users who type "google.com" into Google?

> A casual user might not even know what a URL is. And this will add a few extra hoops for them to jump through before they learn, so that they'll never have to leave the reassuring embrace of Google's ad trackers. How convenient. :)

That's implying there's an "after they learn" - even without those hoops.

Re: Google adds experimental setting to hide full URLs in Chrome 85 address bar

#185

Post by cletus »

ben_w wrote: post #102
cletus wrote: post #94

Another phrase I live by: "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions." There will be some VP of Product or Engineering buried deep in the bureaucracy who is pushing this, deciding with no evidence (or, worse, lots of evidence to the contrary; believe me this happens) that it is the "users who are wrong" [1]. It now takes something like 4 taps to get to the point where I can correct or otherwise edit the URL in m…

Insightful, but I am confused by the final paragraph: > I'm tired of this anti-Web and anti-accessibility SJW nonsense “SJW” must have a meaning I’m not familiar with, because Social Justice Warriors would be pro-accessibility, not anti.

"SJW" is a pejorative at this point because the key part isn't about the ideas being expressed but the motivations behind advocating those views. It implies that despite outward appearances it's all rather self-serving, a form of getting validation and superficial virtue signaling.

So when you see major rewrites, major redesigns and controversial changes in popular products you'll often find an agenda behind it. Someone making a name for themselves, getting promoted, trying to become a "thought leader" [1] and so on. But this self-serving motivation is always wrapped up in a much purer rationalization.

These people tend to be the weeds in any organization. Left unchecked they'll grow to the point of pushing out everything else. They need to be pulled out roots and all. Some will be doing this knowingly to "get ahead". Others are simply lying to themselves. And these are often the worst.

So whenever you see anything about "protecting users", be skeptical. Look for the SJWs pulling on the strings.

[1]: As an aside, pretty much anyone who posts to LinkedIn should forever be excluded from a leadership position of any kind. That's my handy tip for the day.

Re: Google adds experimental setting to hide full URLs in Chrome 85 address bar

#186

Post by gsich »

scandox wrote: post #149

I'm against this. But: it's 2020 and still a huge number of people I deal with every day type the name of our product into their search bar and then login at the first site returned. Most don't know the difference between a browser and a specific website. It's all just a big Smush to them apparently.

It's $current_year is never a good excuse. $people not knowing stuff should not mean that everyone should get dumber to match $people.

Re: Google adds experimental setting to hide full URLs in Chrome 85 address bar

#188

Post by amanzi »

saurik wrote: post #122
curiousgal wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched to Firefox years ago and never looked back.

Given that Firefox slowly adds all the things we hate about Chrome due to the argument "we need to compete for normal users", how much do you want to bet Firefox will hide the URL in a few months (and even remove the setting that lets you change it)? :(

Firefox is already doing this! I recently had to dive into the about:config to find a setting that was hiding part of the URL. Although I can no longer find the setting that I configured so perhaps this has been changed in a recent update?

Edit - found it: the setting "browser.urlbar.trimURLs" hides the "http://" protocol if it's used. I do a lot of local development and found it annoying that Firefox was hiding it.

Re: Google adds experimental setting to hide full URLs in Chrome 85 address bar

#189

Post by polotics »

ahmedfromtunis wrote: post #87

If their goal is really to help detect fraudulent sites (the sorts of google.com.notahacker.tk), they can just show the domain in a more prominent way -- they're already deemphasizing the part of the URL after the domain name anyway. This is clearly not their motive. What Google is trying to do here is to drift the web from its most iconic components: the URL. This is the biggest threat to the web that we loved for s…

Word! Frankly at this point I'm even starting to think that the whole weird "SJW" angle of this thread is also disingenuous and taking us away from the boiling frog death of the Internet, replaced by AMPed up centralized comoditization of users, with death to all liberty and openness.

Re: Google adds experimental setting to hide full URLs in Chrome 85 address bar

#190

Post by mcny »

psexec wrote: post #157
ben_w wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insightful, but I am confused by the final paragraph: > I'm tired of this anti-Web and anti-accessibility SJW nonsense “SJW” must have a meaning I’m not familiar with, because Social Justice Warriors would be pro-accessibility, not anti.

How about this idiocy? https://9to5google.com/2020/06/12/google-android-chrome-blac...

You’ll have to think and decide for yourself whether this is idiocy. I, for one, do not. The master/slave thing is stupid. The master branch in git is idiotic. Whitelist and blacklist, I can do without.
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