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

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

#251

Post by nyanpasu64 » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #161

rudian wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than "momentary" blindness, it feels like some people don't look at their monitors three-dimensionally: It's just buttons and fields everywhere, there's no physical separation between them, there's no hierarchy. They just learn to operate some UIs mechanically and don't put any thought into it. That's why they whine when something moves; As far as they're concerned, that something disappeared into an alternate…

I think it's really easy for programmers to overestimate how much screen parsing everyone else is doing. I've often joked that one of the core skills of a programmer is to be able to look at a terminal scrolling a full screen of text every quarter of a second or so, and extract useful information from it . I've lost track of the times I've seen something "different" and had to scroll up dozens of screens to find what…

Parsing GCC/Clang (or god forbid MSVC) compiler error messages listing a mixture of header paths, usage paths, and unrelated system headers, with no clear distinction between the start of one error and the start of another, is a skill in of itself.

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

#252

Post by bo1024 » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 6:02 PM UTC

I think what's happening is people not understanding what http:// means. They think it's a magic invocation that one uses to tell computers "take me to the following". Maybe.

Anyway, I disagree with some other responses here -- good UI should help teach users what they need to know to navigate effectively. Things should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.

If you believe it's possible to effectively use the web without knowing what a web site is or which web site you're on at any moment, then yes, you might design the omnibar and you might hide the URL details in the address bar. (Or if you benefit financially from people's ignorance.) But if you think users should know these things to effectively and safely navigate the web, then ideally your UI should not only empower knowledgeable users but help inform non-knowledgeable ones.

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

#253

Post by cletus » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 6:03 PM UTC

II2II wrote: post #214

cletus wrote: post #145

This is a good example of making the mistake of conflating implementation details and user interface design. Firefox always had two boxes: URL bar and search. One of the big changes Chrome made when it was born was to have the Omnibar, being of course one bar that does both. If you think about this as an engineer, Firefox's design decision makes sense. You don't want to accidentally leak things to a search engine. UR…

I am going to disagree since I believe that people should have a basic knowledge of the tools they are using. I am not saying that the bar should be particularly high, but being able to differentiate where something is and searching for something is a realistic expectation. That being said, I think developers have made some things more difficult to understand than they should be. While people understand what an addre…

> I believe that people should have a basic knowledge of the tools they are using.

I strongly disagree with this.

Does anyone remember what connecting to Wifi looked like? I'm talking 15+ years ago. Here's how it would go:

1. Click a network

2. Choose an option from WEP, WPA, WPA-PSK, WPA2 and WPA-PSK

3. Be prompted with a either a password, a key selection or a box that generates a bunch of keys. Enter what you think the password is somewhere;

4. If it doesn't work, return to (2) and try something else.

5. If it works, you win.

That was literally how it worked. And then Apple came along and just prompted you for password. Why? Because the OS can figure out the rest so why ask the user?

You can argue "the user should have basic knowledge of the tools they're using". After all, if they're connecting to a WEP network, they should be aware it's not secure.

But users don't care about any of that so there's no point in asking them. You're just forcing users to make decisions they don't care about, don't need to know it and aren't interested in. For what?

That's what great product design and interface design is.

Let's also refer to Joel Spolsky's classic "Choices" [1] where he quotes:

> Every time you provide an option, you’re asking the user to make a decision.

and then goes on to (correctly) say:

> That means they will have to think about something and decide about it. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but, in general, you should always try to minimize the number of decisions that people have to make.

[1]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/12/choices/

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

#254

Post by burnished » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

ryantgtg wrote: post #244

unsui wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> believe that people should have a basic knowledge of the tools they are using The whole point of intuitive design is to realize that you shouldn't make your users "think", insofar as making effortful cognition (i.e., Kahneman's "Type 2" thinking). Good design should leverage built-in assumptions of how the world, per users' intuitive mental models, to create affordances that guide users to the desired interaction a…

Re vim: As a hobby developer (a perpetual newbie) the learning curve is an issue for me simply because I don’t yet understand the value in overcoming the curve. “Efficiency” is not one of my programming goals, and so reasons like “vim is great - it’s super fast” have no appeal. So, remembering 80 unintuitive shortcuts just so I can do what I do in Kate, but a little faster? Eh…

Have you ever seen an experienced user demonstrate some use cases? I'm in the same boat as you but that convinced me because some of it was like magic. I don't think the value is in uniqueness of function, right, but the sort of swiftness of expression you can get.

More like having you workbench set up just perfectly, less like having irreplaceable tools. But the start up cost is what keeps me out - learning it, trying to integrate it into other tools that I don't fully understand anyway (VSCode in my case), etc etc.

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

#255

Post by shadowgovt » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

lowlevel wrote: post #114

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.

Not only allow, but forcefully redirect their search input up into the address bar. In my opinion this has been a deliberate and concerted effort by google to get everyone to 'search' instead of go directly to sites and this ux behaviour has been bothering me for a very long time now. I am not at all surprised people are searching for https after all this time. That being said, there is likely a large number of urls…

You're conflating correlation and causation. Unified URL and search was initially introduced by Firefox (via the awesomebar) in 2008, because they'd observed in user testing that users couldn't tell the difference between search text box and URL text box and were disinclined to learn; rather than continue to retrain users (which they'd attempted with multiple iterations of resizing, new icons, etc.), they unified the features and relied upon the two inputs having wildly different shapes of text to disambiguate.

Chrome followed suit later that year, because by the time Chrome hit the market, awesomebar had demonstrated its utility for end users.

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

#256

Post by burnished » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 6:08 PM UTC

notatoad wrote: post #237

cletus wrote: post #145

This is a good example of making the mistake of conflating implementation details and user interface design. Firefox always had two boxes: URL bar and search. One of the big changes Chrome made when it was born was to have the Omnibar, being of course one bar that does both. If you think about this as an engineer, Firefox's design decision makes sense. You don't want to accidentally leak things to a search engine. UR…

>Here's another example of this: IIRC one of the most frequently searched terms on Google is "facebook". one of the other most frequently searched terms on google is "google", because people don't understand that the chrome omnibox performs a google search, and they want to go to google to perform a search from a dedicated "search" box rather than a URL input - essentially, they want what the firefox UI gave them. if…

the people who don't understand the difference are largely unperturbed by this workflow. which means it satisfies their expectations, even if it isn't optimized for them.

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

#257

Post by burnished » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #191

cletus wrote: post #145

This is a good example of making the mistake of conflating implementation details and user interface design. Firefox always had two boxes: URL bar and search. One of the big changes Chrome made when it was born was to have the Omnibar, being of course one bar that does both. If you think about this as an engineer, Firefox's design decision makes sense. You don't want to accidentally leak things to a search engine. UR…

>Think like a user, not an engineer. So your technology, too, can become a melange of idiotic decisions where you leak things into a search engine! While you're at it, only feed your kids ice cream and pizza because that's what they want to eat. Think like a kid, not an adult.

Its really easy for engineers to get a feeling of superiority because they 'get it' and to wonder why everyone else is so stupid, how could they use this thing they don't understand etc. etc. etc.

You've got weak spots in the tech stack too. I'd wager there are tools that you use without knowing even about their existence. The point isn't to do dumb shit, the point is to have empathy and consider the perspective of other humans who are just as intelligent as you but knowledgeable in different domains.

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

#258

Post by Karellen » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 6:16 PM UTC

ryantgtg wrote: post #244

unsui wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> believe that people should have a basic knowledge of the tools they are using The whole point of intuitive design is to realize that you shouldn't make your users "think", insofar as making effortful cognition (i.e., Kahneman's "Type 2" thinking). Good design should leverage built-in assumptions of how the world, per users' intuitive mental models, to create affordances that guide users to the desired interaction a…

Re vim: As a hobby developer (a perpetual newbie) the learning curve is an issue for me simply because I don’t yet understand the value in overcoming the curve. “Efficiency” is not one of my programming goals, and so reasons like “vim is great - it’s super fast” have no appeal. So, remembering 80 unintuitive shortcuts just so I can do what I do in Kate, but a little faster? Eh…

The value is that your fingers stay in the same place for typing, and for editing/commands. But also, once the commands aren't just in your actual memory, but are partially in your muscle memory, you don't even really have to think about what key sequence you're using; it just happens. Your fingers know.

The advantage of both of these factors combined is that you don't have to think about editing, or the user interface. You don't have to break the flow of thinking about your code. You type code, you edit code, you rearrange code, and you only ever have to think about the code. You don't have to spare brain cycles to think about editing, your fingers just do it.

It's like learning to touch type. There are two fingered typists who can type almost as fast as I can touch type. Or even six-fingered typists who might be able to go a bit faster. But even though they know where the keys are, they still need to keep an eye on the keyboard to type. They still need to think about the keyboard. But once you learn to touch-type, you don't need to think about typing any more. You just... type. Being able to keeping your eyes on the screen all the time just allows you to concentrate on your code, rather on the way you're entering it.

By turning some conscious actions into muscle memory, it leaves your conscious mind able to spend more time on the things you want to think about.

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

#259

Post by klyrs » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 6:18 PM UTC

gnabgib wrote: post #215

wartijn_ wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The settings screen has the option "show search in address bar results". You can turn that off.

It's the perfect setup really, you can turn it off, but if you want it you can type "? " into the address bar and it'll go to default search - or use one of your engine short codes as the first word "@google hackernews" about:config -> keyword.enabled -> false (to stop sending possible search terms automatically to your default search engine, this includes when you type a URL firefox mistakes for a search term) about…

This is something... but it isn't perfect. The address bar is still not purely an address bar. It still defaults to sending a query to a search engine (I like to use this to search for partial URL matches, for example, navigating git repos that I use frequently). That's what the search bar is for. Bah humbug. Even with all these options set, FF still encourages confusion between URLs and searching.

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

#260

Post by shadowgovt » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 6:18 PM UTC

jkfdrsak wrote: post #216

admax88qqq wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is their mental model wrong? Perhaps the model of having separate url vs search boxes is wrong.

If these people read a bad news story about google, they will not know how to stop using google for any and all web access. A discerning consumer often opts to alter their product use under similar circumstances. They are dependent on a middleman because their understanding of the boxes they type things into does not reflect reality. This is what it means for a mental model to be "wrong". The realized model of having…

I think if we imagine that a user, having read some bad news about Google, will respond with "I'm never typing anything into that little search box next to my URL bar again" and isn't simultaneously a user savvy enough to respond to such news by reconfiguring their network stack to blackhole all traffic to Google servers, we're thinking of users that exist in such a small quantity that we could address their concerns by finding them, one by one, and teaching them how to edit a network stack.

The vast bulk of users would respond either by changing nothing about their behavior because all this stuff is inside-baseball to them, or changing their behavior by resetting their browser's search bar to some other target (for example, I can go into Chrome right now and remove Google from the list of search engines).

At this point, one really has to reach to conclude that awesomebars are bad for end-users without an ideology that doesn't reflect the average user very well at all.