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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

#381
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…

Firefox's still an option.

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

#382
post #178

This is a setting, in flags (i.e. not in regular settings, the whole section in the ui is marked 'experiments') in the dev/canary builds of the browser. It defaults to off . The article (and even its slightly HN-improved title) is pure ragebait.

The setting will go away, as such things always do.

There are actually tons of Chrome experiments that never launch 100% and have their flag removed. They are experiments for a reason. This lets the Chrome team iterate on things and try it out.

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

#383

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…

> give you the smallest query that would have returned exactly this page as a first result

Just out of curiosity, is there a publicly accessible Google service, or a third party service, that does this? That would be useful to find more content or point-of-view about a topic (by looking at the other results)

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

#385

I actually wouldn't mind if the URL bar was replaced with a breadcrumb bar on some sites, like news and forums. Imagine something like Example.com > Worldnews > 2020 > 06 > 14 > Big aquatic monster spotted outside of Tokyo or forum.example.com > Sport > Football > Spain > Real Madrid It could then work like in Explorer in Windows 10, where you can press one of the breadcrumb separators and see a menu with siblings, o…

But there's nothing stopping websites from offering that without browser support. It can just show that at the top of the page. Everything it provides is under the authority of the website. The URL needs to be provided by the browser because it's not entirely under the authority of the website, but that's not the case for a breadcrumb bar.

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

#386

I actually wouldn't mind if the URL bar was replaced with a breadcrumb bar on some sites, like news and forums. Imagine something like Example.com > Worldnews > 2020 > 06 > 14 > Big aquatic monster spotted outside of Tokyo or forum.example.com > Sport > Football > Spain > Real Madrid It could then work like in Explorer in Windows 10, where you can press one of the breadcrumb separators and see a menu with siblings, o…

On some sites, this could be done using breadcrumbs.jsonld:

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/breadcr...

Sadly not used everywhere, but maybe browser support would encourage its usage by site owners.

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

#387
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 tired of this anti-Web and anti-accessibility SJW nonsense to the point that yeah, I'm ready to ditch Chrome. It's funny what the final piece of straw is that breaks peoples' metaphorical camels' backs. Still, better it breaks and people make the move to greener pastures — hopefully Firefox rather than Chrome-with-even-more-questionable-ethics … I don't remember the name, something like Courageous or Fearless o…

It strikes me as not fair that comments are flagged and one line remains by being quoted.

The comment was entirely reasonable apart from the (accidental?) misuse of the TLA. But it also was anti-management and anti-talker, so lots of parasites here would have downvoted it anyway.

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

#388

I actually wouldn't mind if the URL bar was replaced with a breadcrumb bar on some sites, like news and forums. Imagine something like Example.com > Worldnews > 2020 > 06 > 14 > Big aquatic monster spotted outside of Tokyo or forum.example.com > Sport > Football > Spain > Real Madrid It could then work like in Explorer in Windows 10, where you can press one of the breadcrumb separators and see a menu with siblings, o…

There were several extensions that transformed location bar like you propose, but naturally just did simple domain, path and query segments transformation into clickable buttons producing breadcrumbs. It was a delight to use and I miss them in Firefox since Quantum leap prevented them to work any longer.

https://www.ghacks.net/2011/03/01/improve-firefoxs-urlbar-wi...

They by default worked very similarly the aforementioned Windows Explorer, what in focused state with keyboard input turns into "raw" text field.

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

#389
post #327
post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Developers at least the experienced ones never left firefox. For the new developers who got hooked on chrome over the last 10/15 years time to move to a developer friendly browser. At this point ie becomes more useful.

Blink is the most common browser engine. Firefox has some nice developer tools but if you don't test in blink throughout the day then you're just asking for problems.

Blink will remain the most common if that's all devs continue to optimize for. Not a way to change anything for the better.

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

#390
post #178

This is a setting, in flags (i.e. not in regular settings, the whole section in the ui is marked 'experiments') in the dev/canary builds of the browser. It defaults to off . The article (and even its slightly HN-improved title) is pure ragebait.

The setting will go away, as such things always do.

They don't 'always do' and the article is still flagworthy ragebait. There are dog farts that serve intellectual curiosity than this type of thing.
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