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

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

#101

Post by soylentcola » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 3:16 PM UTC

rspeele wrote: post #93

soylentcola wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time, oil changes are more of a hassle that you only need to deal with every year or two. You can get away with not bothering to sort it out (and even if you know how, it might be worth the extra cost to just pay someone to do it faster on those rare occasions). But if you use a computer to access resources and services on the web, you probably do so much more frequently than you change your oil. I'd like…

> (and even if you know how, it might be worth the extra cost to just pay someone to do it faster on those rare occasions) Going off on a tangent: I thought that this would be the case when I switched to changing my own oil -- if I was feeling lazy, I could always have the shop do it. But I found out right away that when the local quick-change place does it, they tighten the drain plug and oil filter to roughly a zil…

I just stopped bothering when it got harder to access the filter/drain and I moved to the city where I park on the street. I'm much less interested in farting around under the car, getting messy, and spending a half hour or more to drain the oil, replace the filter, and refill.

At some point I just decided it was worth the extra cost to be in and out quickly. And honestly, when you add up the cost of replacement filter and oil, the premium isn't terrible when you add in time saved. I like knowing how to do it, but it's been several years since I bothered.

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

#102

Post by Avicebron » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 3:17 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #80

Avicebron wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the post was really talking about the limits of human agency. If we could easily and manually move those electrons ourselves, we probably would be vastly more intuitive and able to tailor the best answer for our query. I think having a relatively intelligible URL bar allows people more freedom from whatever the larger agenda those who would have such an advanced search bar that you type in "object" and it aut…

> why encourage people to use less of their capacity to navigate Because automating tedium is the purpose of the machine. Most of what we do is in pursuit of allowing the user to do more with less of their capacity. The URL itself is a naming abstraction to let users identify things. And it's not even a great one; it has some sharp edges from the end-user's point of view (why does the end user care about protocol? Th…

Sure, I don't disagree that automating tedium (I'd say self discovery isn't tedium, but not quibble) is the purpose of the machine.

However, what I take issue is with "intelligently identify multiple ways to identify "the thing"" sure, in you're example if someone wants to get to the top search result for "the history of mesopotamia" it might be doing alright...but, who is the one who decided what that search result is, if I type in "history of mesopotamia" and I get shunted directly to the wikipedia entry, maybe that's all ever get, I won't see the thing I really might have wanted which was a specific book about stone tablets of mesopotamia.

The point is, offloading our intelligence to "the machine" only makes as smart or as agenda driven as the machine and its maker, this overall must have some limiting effect. even if doing more with less capacity is good, if the capacity itself is limited to the machine, then it's like saying, I can eat more pie, but the pie is also shrinking.

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

#103

Post by coldtea » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 3:17 PM UTC

rchaud wrote: post #69

coldtea wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 rega…

I don't think that's true. Tech illiteracy was built in to the 'minimal' design of iOS, which influenced every mobile interface that followed. Design today is 'mobile first', meaning the starting point is to hide functionality, then add the barest minimum possible for the user to complete a task. I remember needing to switch from my tablet to a real computer when I had an issue with an Airbnb booking and couldn't fin…

>I don't think that's true.

From what you've written here though, it seems that you do agree with me...

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

#104

Post by bmicraft » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 3:17 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…

Users not knowing what a url bar even is will be actively dangerous when they've somehow managed to land on a fishing site though.

I don't think that can be engineered away in any reasonable way soon, so saying they shouldn't need to know seems irresponsible to me

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

#105

Post by soylentcola » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 3:18 PM UTC

garaetjjte wrote: post #51

londons_explore wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think this is good example, choke valve just doesn't exist on any "modern" car.

Yeah, I only know about it from using other carbureted things (lawnmower, generator, motorcycle, etc.) If I'd only ever started up a modern car, I probably wouldn't know about it either.

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

#106

Post by windowsrookie » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 3:18 PM UTC

jabroni_salad wrote: post #89

JohnWhigham wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People get old and obstinate. It's sad but at the end of the day, they choose to be like this.

I promise you it is younger people too. I train bank workers from freshly minted tellers to longtime officers, none of them can navigate to a URL unless it is a clickable hyperlink. The URL is one of the most foundational elements of internet usage, it is the way to get directly to where you want to go. Having a map is nice, but don't you need to know how to walk in order to get where you are going? Heck, there have…

I've actually been hearing and interesting theory that the younger generation is becoming even more computer illiterate than the generation before them.

The younger generation was raised on iPads and iPhones where everything is easy to use and "just works". They've never had to do anything beyond tap the icon for the App they want.

Edit: Was going to talk about that same article about File directories.

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

#107

Post by marginalia_nu » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 3:18 PM UTC

jikbd wrote: post #95

marginalia_nu wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had a bunch of bots doing oddly specific nonsense searches in my search engine, stuff like casinos, online pharmacies, warez. The bermuda triangle of dodgy internet sites. They are very strange because they are both generic and specific at the same time. Here is an example: > skyrim english voice files (and subtitles) latest version You get no results with my search engine, but interestingly, if you feed that in…

They were probably trying to post spam and thought your search bar was a comment input field.

Could be, but usually bots that post spam include some form of link, not just keywords. The link is the entire point of posting spam.

There also seems to be a few distinct bots doing this, with distinct user agents (but bots with the same UA spam-search on the same topic out of epharma, casino, warez).

I also have another, identical search box in another part of the site and it has never seen any sort of spam bots.

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

#108

Post by karaterobot » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 3:19 PM UTC

The author's thesis may be true: maybe people make this mistake all the time.

But, remember on the Tonight Show, where Jay Leno would go out on the street and ask a lot of people questions, then they'd edit together a segment that made it look like all of the interview subjects were idiots? It's not fair to characterize the entire sample from a curated selection.

In this case, Amazon probably gets hundreds of millions of searches a day, and it probably doesn't take many URLs being pasted in the search box to show up as automatic suggestions. One of the examples that pops up is "amzn.to/3tmosfj": how many people do we think searched for that url? A million people? Closer to a hundred people? Or was it one person, one time, out of a billion possible users?

I don't know the answer, but that's the point: nobody does. So, we can't draw conclusions from this example about how people use (or misuse) the search bar.

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

#109

Post by SubiculumCode » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 3:20 PM UTC

Everyone reaches for the interesting explanation, but usually the actual explanation is much more mundane. Sure a small percentage won't understand the difference between the two search bars, but even power users who are working on a computer all day enter text in the wrong field. It just happens, and it's not that interesting.

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

#110

Post by hateful » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 3:20 PM UTC

jabroni_salad wrote: post #89

JohnWhigham wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People get old and obstinate. It's sad but at the end of the day, they choose to be like this.

I promise you it is younger people too. I train bank workers from freshly minted tellers to longtime officers, none of them can navigate to a URL unless it is a clickable hyperlink. The URL is one of the most foundational elements of internet usage, it is the way to get directly to where you want to go. Having a map is nice, but don't you need to know how to walk in order to get where you are going? Heck, there have…

I think that the fact newer versions of popular OSes (Windows, Android) try hard and harder to hide the filesystem from the users - probably because "they won't understand". But in the long run, hiding it makes the problem even worse.