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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

#401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's what devs will continue to optimize for while it continues to be most common. The goal of most web developers is to make pages users can use, not get mired down in the never-ending browser wars.

It's the most common because devs optimize for it. That's a Catch 22 you can't break out of if you continue to optimize for it, an infinite loop.

Yes. That is network effect.

As the smaller vendor, it's incumbent upon Mozilla to break it. Expecting individual devs to do it collectively when it really isn't in their selfish interests is waiting for a unicorn to appear.

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

#402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Changing from blacklist and whitelist to blocklist and allowlist is one of the many small things we can do that makes our black colleagues feel seen, heard, and welcome in our workplaces. I support it. No one thinks changing language is enough to eliminate the systemic racism oppressing black people in the US. Eliminating that will require work and personal change. If you can't even stop using black to mean negative…

It's worth noting that "blacklist" is awful because it's origins are in British history, having to do political assassination and conspiracy. Amongst a bunch of very Caucasian parties. The "black" is not racial but metaphorical, as in "the absence if light". The connection to dark-skinned folks is accidental through the science of optics. Light being good and darkness being bad is part of most (all?) monotheistic cul…

> It's worth noting that "blacklist" is awful because it's origins are in British history,

> The connection to dark-skinned folks is accidental through the science of optics.

Both of these are an oversimplification that leaves out other context and other history.

The first recorded use of the term "blacklist" occurs at the time of mass enslavement and forced deportation of Africans to work in European-held colonies in the Americas.

> To excise them all would include considering much art, culture, and even holy texts insensitive.

That is a strawman. No one is suggesting to eliminate all historical uses of darkness meaning bad. What we are talking about is very specific: words that are very commonly used in a modern work setting, and that have clearer alternatives.

> The connection to dark-skinned folks is accidental.

It far too convenient that "black" continued to mean evil in the midst of widespread dehumanization and slavery for it to be purely accidental.

Consider also that the Latin word "niger" had many of the same figurative senses ("gloomy; unlucky; bad, wicked, malicious"). Another accident?

But if it were accidental - and I think that would be near impossible to prove - many microagressions are accidental.

> we should not assume racist history and intention everywhere

That's another strawman. Where was that assumption made? Besides the fact that much of modern Western history is racist.

Racism against black people in the US has survived for well over 200 years. Thanks much in part to lack of intention. Clearly, it's not enough to have absence of bad intentions. We tried that, and it is not working.

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

#403
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not an example of idiocy. Idiocy would be an anecdote my father told me in the mid-90s about his workplace trying to implement the same spirit with a naïve global search-and-replace, leading very quickly to a company-wide invitation to an “African-American tie dinner”. But even that isn’t anti-accessibility .

I believe the preferred term these days is "tie dinner of color"

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

#404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 –…

Zoom works in Firefox.

And there are alternatives to Zoom, e.g. Jitsi.

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

#405

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…

The URL bar takes up a huge amount of screen real estate and is a piece of information that the user almost never needs once they have confirmed they navigated successfully to the desired page. Developers are a special case user and capable of handling advanced UIs that hide information until it is needed.

It's iconic but it's a UI space resource hog. To improve browser experience, sometimes one has to be willing to try slaughtering a sacred cow.

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

#406
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably because most advanced users turn off all telemetry when possible. And http://localhost is probably ignored in statistics anyway.

I mostly leave telemetry on in products I care about specifically so that my advanced use cases get logged.

Thats admirable, but you are a minority within a minority.

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

#407
Google is grooming next generation of users. It wants to be the Internet, the way IE (the E logo) used to be Internet to many users.

Can you imagine removing house numbers from Street addresses? "Where did you buy that? On Main Str., but there wasn't any number..."

If the URLs are ugly it's not Google's place to regulate that, but website's owner.

If this is to protect users, then instead of removing information, add and/or make it more user friendly.

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

#408
post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the nefarious thing about the shift from outright slurs to more approachable concepts. The less obvious it is you're talking about a marginalized group, the more people you can rope in who don't realize it's a dog whistle. Soon it's hard to tell who's who from outside the growing and ever-angrier mob. One day it's "jews" or "queers," the next it's "SJWs" and people who are just a little frustrated with modern…

Pointing out the dogwhistle works for me and doesn't become guilt by association. It's also worth noting that some folks bothered by social justice movements are bothered by the qualities they share with fascist ones: thought crime, lack of due process, blacklisting, doublespeak, etc. It's possible actual allies againt oppression seem "evil adjacent" right now, but only because they aren't comfortable with fighting f…

That's reasonable. The thing that makes me wary of people like that also make me wary of some people on my "side." A lot of them use language and tactics to attack people deemed evil by their in-group that they would criticize if used by the out-group.

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

#409

I'd personally prefer if ot wasn't hidden but after first hamd experiencing non tech savvy family members trying to decipher the query part and some accusing someone of trying to hack them I'm for the change. The whole query string philosophy is such an outdated hack. Today it's just thousands of tracking qieries. What I hate is how poorly they worded when websites use http instead of https. It says "connection not s…

Querystring an outdated hack? Look pilgrim, that's the standard for you right there. It's called RFC3986.

3.4. Query

   The query component contains non-hierarchical data that, along with
   data in the path component (Section 3.3), serves to identify a
   resource within the scope of the URI's scheme and naming authority
   (if any).
Today they are used for tracking strings more than anything else and that's also the reason why they are hiding them. People didn't complain if they were used as search queries

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

#410
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.

the latest version of Firefox has an "import Passwords from another browser" feature. just go to "about:logins" and click the menu in the top right hand corner.
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