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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

#261

Post by foldr »

cletus wrote: post #185
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.

"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. Some…

This has nothing to do with so-called SJWs. Please think twice before using politically toxic language in a thread that isn't even about politics. I guess it pleases you to tell a story about how this trivial UI design decision is actually the result of the machinations of your political enemies. But there is absolutely zero evidence for that. Do you really find it so hard to imagine that the decision was made with good intentions?

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

#262

Post by gpvos »

jorisw wrote: post #234
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…

> SJW nonsense Congratulations on making everything about politics, even if it has zero to do with it.

Actually everything is political, some things just more than others, and pulling in the SJW discussion is indeed not relevant here.

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

#263

Post by noisem4ker »

Santosh83 wrote: post #89

Pretty ironic for a company that wouldn't exist except for the ability to crawl and index URLs. So now only the domain and TLDs are to be shown. I presume that a "full" URL can be typed once the URL bar is clicked though? But any guesses how long until they remove the ability to enter URLs?

>Pretty ironic for a company that wouldn't exist except for the ability to crawl and index URLs.

It's called "kicking the ladder after climbing the wall".

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

#264

Post by andromeduck »

bbarn wrote: post #81

Why not just use a syntax highlighting approach on the address bar? Protocol one color, domain another, slashes one color, query params another, etc.

What you described is more like highlighting the function signature in one color and the entire body in another. Syntax highlighting for the URL would be more like domain/subdomain in one color, emphasising query fields in one color and params in another, with colors potentially varying potentially based on their type/significance.

That might help make the URL more readable but again doesn't really help if the relevant parts of the path/query string for trust isn't immediately apparent.

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

#265

Post by JBiserkov »

amanzi wrote: post #188
saurik wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks for this! Turned it off. I guess I haven't noticed because my focus was always attracted to the padlock with a red line through it in front of the URL.

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

#266

Post by Viliam1234 »

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…

I assume the goal is to make sure that people never remember the URL and always use Google to get anywhere. Most people probably already do, but maybe increasing their number from 80% to 90% is still worth it.

If this is indeed the real motivation, the next obvious target would be bookmarks. What can be done about them? Replace the bookmarked URLs by Google queries? It would be an interesting functionality if Google could look at a page and give you the smallest query that would have returned exactly this page as a first result. Then bookmark the query instead of the URL. And if the search results change in the future... I suppose, it would be possible to spin this as a feature. ("Self-improving bookmarks" perhaps? You don't have to worry about link rot; with latest Google self-improving bookmarks, your bookmark will always point to the best existing page on given topic!)

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

#267

Post by nateweiss »

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…

"It now takes something like 4 taps to get to the point where I can correct or otherwise edit the URL in my mobile browser (Safari)"

Just FYI, you can touch once in the URL bar to set focus to it (the whole URL will be selected), then touch and hold down on the keyboard (which will then act like a desktop touchpad) to move the cursor around to edit the URL.

I find this handy, though it took me a while to get used to it.

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

#268

Post by criley2 »

cletus wrote: post #185
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.

"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. Some…

[flagged]

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

#269

Post by distances »

cletus wrote: post #185
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.

"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. Some…

> "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.

Is SJW really seen as pejorative? In my mind it's a term used only by the alt-right, and usually if alt-right is trying to smear someone it's a good indicator the target is advocating a good cause. So I usually take SJW as a positive description.

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

#270

Post by darrmit »

noisy_boy wrote: post #209

I moved back to Firefox last year and haven't had any reason to switch back to Chrome. FF has been plenty performant and even if was few microseconds slower than Chrome, I will still stick with it because it's in our collective interest to keep the competition alive. This ridiculous decision by Google just made my resolve stronger.

Ditto. At first the biggest thing I struggled with was less-obvious profile support in FF, but container tabs and a bookmark on the toolbar to “about:profiles” nearly completely solved that. Now I greatly prefer my FF config and am glad to be free of Chrome decisions like this.
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