Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users • Hacker News Board

Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#41

Post by coldpie » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 2:38 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #14

picture wrote: post #2

Just yesterday I witnessed my friend type a url into the google search bar (on the results page). She found what she was looking for, so I guess that's alright.

This has always perplexed me. The fact that so many people use a search engine for new windows/tabs combined with browsers shrinking the URL bar to near non-existence makes this an obvious thing people will do though. Reminds me of the old AOL keywords. It's all about getting those precious analytics. If the users go to a website directly from typing a URL, 3rd parties loose those metrics.

Google is actively trying to kill the URL[1]. I'm not sure whether it's good or bad, but it is a goal of theirs to fundamentally change or eliminate the URL entry bar, yes.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/google-chrome-ends-i...

Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#42

Post by aceazzameen » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 2:40 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #29

phkahler wrote: post #12

This is because Google and Microsoft have confused the users by allowing them to type whatever into wherever and they just figure it out. Some would call that good UI - probably myself included - but it teaches bad behavior and makes people dumber by obscuring what things really are.

In the 1980's, taking away the 'choke' lever which assisted starting a car was seen by some as removing a critical control. Yet automatic chokes became standard, and today's drivers usually don't even know or care what a choke even is. Todays people have other things to spend their time learning. People of tomorrow may not need to know or care what the difference is between a search box and a URL bar. All they know i…

This is a good analogy. Quite frequently I think "if only more companies did a better job at educating users instead of dumbing things down." But then I remember a lot of users don't want to be educated about things they're not interested in. They just want things to work so they can move on to whatever else they have going on in their lives.

Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#43

Post by coldtea » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 2:43 PM UTC

ltbarcly3 wrote: post #17

People who don't know anything get confused, but this is going to be older people who are struggling to use computers, the people that call the Microsoft Edge icon "the internet". Generalizing that "users don't understand" from some autocomplete suggestions does not logically follow.

>People who don't know anything get confused, but this is going to be older people who are struggling to use computers, the people that call the Microsoft Edge icon "the internet".

You'd be surprised. Research has found that the "digital native" generations (younger people born into/after the internet age) are no better at these things than the "older people" - the whole "digital native" thing is a myth in this regard.

It's mostly about being interested in tech/a nerd vs not. Kids that don't, might know 100 ways to use Instagram or specific tools they need, but can't tell a URL bar from a search bar (and other basic distinctions/skills) either.

Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#44

Post by 3np » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 2:43 PM UTC

rosseloh wrote: post #35

On phone support calls I usually can't even get people who know what a URL, URL bar, or even a search bar, is in the first place. "The box at the top where you type in websites you want to go to." "What are you talking about? I'm computer illiterate, I can't learn any of this fancy tech stuff. I just click my facebook icon and it comes up!" These people get all sorts of confused when something happens in their browse…

> I'm computer illiterate, I can't learn any of this fancy tech stuff.

This learned helplessness scares me a bit. It's like the willingness to comprehend stops at "tap".

"What are you talking about, 'steering wheel'?! I'm not a greasemonkey, are you talking about the thing I turn to make the car turn?"

Not knowing is one thing, refusing to take in any new knowledge is another.

Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#45

Post by dylan604 » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 2:43 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #41

dylan604 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has always perplexed me. The fact that so many people use a search engine for new windows/tabs combined with browsers shrinking the URL bar to near non-existence makes this an obvious thing people will do though. Reminds me of the old AOL keywords. It's all about getting those precious analytics. If the users go to a website directly from typing a URL, 3rd parties loose those metrics.

Google is actively trying to kill the URL[1]. I'm not sure whether it's good or bad, but it is a goal of theirs to fundamentally change or eliminate the URL entry bar, yes. [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/google-chrome-ends-i...

>I'm not sure whether it's good or bad,

It's bad, very very bad

Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#46

Post by rchaud » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #21

phkahler wrote: post #12

This is because Google and Microsoft have confused the users by allowing them to type whatever into wherever and they just figure it out. Some would call that good UI - probably myself included - but it teaches bad behavior and makes people dumber by obscuring what things really are.

If you paste a link into the google search box, a good fraction of the time it doesn't lead you on a path to arriving at that link. For example, try the URL of this page. For me, zero results.

The URL of this page probably hasn't been indexed yet as it was created today. It also doesn't include any identifiable strings of text, just a page ID number.

Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#47

Post by david422 » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

rosseloh wrote: post #35

On phone support calls I usually can't even get people who know what a URL, URL bar, or even a search bar, is in the first place. "The box at the top where you type in websites you want to go to." "What are you talking about? I'm computer illiterate, I can't learn any of this fancy tech stuff. I just click my facebook icon and it comes up!" These people get all sorts of confused when something happens in their browse…

This is my mom. Trying to walk her through steps on the phone like logins and lost passwords is a nightmare.

I imagine it would be like a car mechanic trying to walk me through changing the oil over the phone. Since it's not in my interests, I just want it to work, I don't have any desire to learn it.

Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#48

Post by shadowgovt » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 2:50 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #12

This is because Google and Microsoft have confused the users by allowing them to type whatever into wherever and they just figure it out. Some would call that good UI - probably myself included - but it teaches bad behavior and makes people dumber by obscuring what things really are.

> and makes people dumber by obscuring what things really are.

"What things really are" is microscopic invisible electrical patterns thrumming through specially-shaped chemically-doped sand to shove some crystals back and forth to change some reflected and emitted light frequencies that hit a human eye to be interpreted by a human brain.

Literally everything about UX is obscuring what things really are, because what things really are is "utterly incompatible with human cognition." There's an entire field of disciplined study to build a compatibility layer regular people can use; without it, all these fancy computers are just dumb matter in weird shapes.

Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#49

Post by mfext » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #12

This is because Google and Microsoft have confused the users by allowing them to type whatever into wherever and they just figure it out. Some would call that good UI - probably myself included - but it teaches bad behavior and makes people dumber by obscuring what things really are.

Actually it was Mozilla

Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#50

Post by tobr » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

A similar problem I’ve ran into both in tech support and user studies is momentary blindness for the scope of search. For example on your Mac, you have Spotlight, Finder search, Google search, help menu search, and various application-specific or website-specific search fields. In my experience if two of those are on screen at the same time, it’s very easy to get confused about which one to use to get which type of result.

You don’t need to be a naive user to make this mistake. The problem is that your brain is thinking “search”, your eyes are looking for something that looks like a search input, and when you find one you click it and start typing.

I feel like that’s what’s going wrong in this example too; it’s not that people expect Amazon to bring them to any random webpage, it’s just that there are two similar looking text inputs very close together on the screen.