Live data from Hacker News

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

androidpolice.com

241–250 of 733 posts

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

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but would you discover that by looking at the url? In the vast majority of cases it'll be mentally filtered out by the user anyway for the same reason why nobody cares about the http and :// part, they just want to know if it's secured or not.

> Yeah but would you discover that by looking at the url? If I want to be on www.example.com and I'm actually on example.com, then yes I can discover that by looking at the URL.

You and maybe the 3 other people that might also notice if a site is serving different pages for http vs https. If it's accessible in the browser its already part of the world wide web so what information is it even conveying?

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

#243
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is weird not more people just respond this way rather than getting all worked up about it...

Passwords and bookmarks are in Chrome. That's the main point of friction. But I do re-evaluate Firefox from time to time. So far there has often been small things which made me reluctant. I think this feature is important enough for me to consider switching this time.

You can import your passwords into a 3rd party password manager and enjoy having them available on any devices and browsers supported by the password manager.

As for bookmark, firefox should be able to import chrome bookmark. It can even import saved passwords and cookies so your active session is preserved.

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

#244
post #62

While this might be useful for a casual user, hidden URLs are a huge problem for web developers. Asking for a screenshot from client is not enough, now I'll have to provide additional instructions how to copy/paste full URL when reporting issues. Not to mention all possible problems with misconfigured servers when www and www-less domains lead to same website, but some script refuses to work on one of those. While it…

If you're relying on bug reports to find why a page is broken you're in for a bad time because 99% of the time the user isn't going to report anything. They're just going to think your page is broken and stop using it. Use a telemetry and error reporting service like Sentry or Rollbar. These services can strip sensitive data on the client before it gets logged.

Sentry only capture software exceptions. It doesn't tell you a page is rendering badly in the user's browser.

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

#245
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A heads up for those with lots of tabs open: This requires a browser restart, and setting it once seems to set it for all profiles.

If you happen to close your browser and lose your tabs, use the reopen closed tab menu option, it'll bring all the closed tabs (even if multiple tabs).

Even safer is to use an extension like Session Buddy, to explicitly save tabs and windows, including exporting to files.

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

#247
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.

This is a completely different matter.

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

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird that people like a particular browswer for a number of its feature, but are upset about a change that makes it worse?

Chrome is the new IE. Some sites don’t work (well) with others browsers, so people are annoyed when the browser they are forced to use does stupid things.

Before Edge came out, I always preferred IE11 over Chrome (on machines that only had those two installed), because IE11 kept the legacy "must compete with Netscape" features like decent contentEditable context menus. And websites that didn't work in IE11 generally weren't worth using anyway.

Now… well, IE11 doesn't even support ES6 properly, and good sites have started relying on that, and Edge is just evil Chrome – unless it's got Firefox installed, Chrome's your only option. But sites that use Chrome-only APIs aren't worth using anyway.

(Oh, wait, Zoom needs either Chrome or a malwarey desktop program.)

Post reply on HN