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Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

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

#301

Post by marginalia_nu »

panda88888 wrote: post #283
marginalia_nu wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder if these are attempts to drive up the “interest” metric, with the hypothesis that the more search for a specific string, the result that is exact match gets higher ranking?

Could definitely be something along those lines. Discovering all this black hat SEO stuff and what they are doing to manipulate search engines has been one of the great joys of this project.

Nobody seems to write much about it, maybe because they don't want to give people ideas, but it's an endlessly fascinating subject.

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

#302

Post by JadeNB »

booleandilemma wrote: post #22
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.

On the rare occasions when I’m manually typing out a url, that’s what I do also, just in case I ever mistype it. It’s better than being directed to the wrong site. Normally I don’t even need a url though, I’ll just google “chase bank” or wherever it is I’m trying to go.

> Normally I don’t even need a url though, I’ll just google “chase bank” or wherever it is I’m trying to go.

I know Google is generally supposed to be above maliciously modifying search results, but people definitely aren't above maliciously poisoning Google search results. I definitely wouldn't want to get to my bank's website by any source other than my bank telling me where it is. (I do rely on my history and/or my bookmarks to remember that once the bank tells me, but hopefully those are proof against external malice, or else I've got bigger problems.)

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

#303

Post by moonbug »

solveit wrote: post #269
8ytecoder wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't we teach this in schools? My high school curriculum covered the basics of the UI elements - window, menu bar, URL and such - in addition to OpenOffice and the basics about internet (this was 1998)

To a first approximation, school can't teach anything. Most of your high school class don't remember what DNS is.

To a first approximation, you are talking out of your arse.

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

#304

Post by loeg »

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". Tech-savvy people will just type "facebook.com" but users will just search for "facebook" and click on the (hopefully) first result. That happens a ton.

I've actually switched to searching even for URLs I know, if they don't autocomplete from history. My typing accuracy isn't 100%, and I'm confident the top Google result will be the correct domain even if I make a typo (rather than some phishing clone squatting on an adjacent name).

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

#305

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

coldtea wrote: post #300
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah, right. A few months back in 2021 I was asked how to "make an app on the phone". Not FOR a phone, ON a phone, the complete development only using a phone. WTF? You jest, but it's possible. There is an Android IDE that includes a compiler that runs on Android. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui&hl...

Yes, and there are also coding environment apps that go all the way from coding to the app store in iOS. But in this case it's 99% more likely that the person asking didn't have these in mind, but just misunderstood what it takes to make a regular mobile app and though it obvious that regular mobile app development happens on the phones themselves. So they were correct by accident, and only because there are some nic…

Yeah, good point and well said.

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

#306

Post by chrismorgan »

8ytecoder wrote: post #243
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…

Firefox has has an "omni" bar for a long time. Firefox could search your bookmarks and history as you type in an URL (in addition to keywords that could trigger searches). It was one of the key reasons (in addition to tabs) that I switched to Firefox back in the day. (Or am I misremembering this?)

It was back in Firefox 3 (released a few months before Chrome was announced) that Firefox’s address bar got the last significant pieces of that functionality and was dubbed the AwesomeBar.

I think that at that time Firefox still struggled with single-word searches from the address bar, treating them as domain names; if so, that was probably the last material difference (as distinct from social) before Firefox could reasonably remove the search box by default.

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

#307

Post by px43 »

withinboredom wrote: post #238
taxicabjesus wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "kids these days don't know anyone's phone number!" If it works it works My passenger had my phone number memorized. I went to visit him when he called me from jail. I used his gmail password to get his contacts' phone numbers to try to get someone else to bail him out, but it was only $300. After a few days I paid up to bail him out. He missed his next court date. I went to the bail revocation hearing a couple mon…

That story reminds me of this homeless guy I helped out one night. He was wearing a suit, which is why I believed him, actually. He said he was a pilot, who just moved into a house but locked himself out with his wallet inside. So he attempted to break into his own house. The neighbors called the cops and he was arrested. Now he was “homeless” until he got things sorted out. I ran into him a few days later, he taught…

Are these blobs of text being generated by some language model or something? They seem like wildly incoherent generated stories 100% unrelated to the content of the article or this thread.

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

#308

Post by kccqzy »

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...

Safari has done that many years ago. I don't recall it being a point of discussion, let alone a full article.

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

#309

Post by jychang »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #276
unsui wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're thinking like a HN reader, rather than the intended audience for the chrome omnibar (i.e., non-specialists) They don't want the abstraction punctured to see the inner workings... Anything less than that creates a Norman Door conflict, whereby their inner mental models conflict with the intended interaction, where they want to pull the door, when the door only works by pushing (yet the door handle basically bec…

> They don't want the abstraction punctured to see the inner workings... > Anything less than that creates a Norman Door conflict, whereby their inner mental models conflict with the intended interaction (...) Here I disagree, because the underlying assumption is that those "intuitive" interfaces are exploiting an existing mental model of the users, like door handles in the physical world. This is not true, because c…

> and there is no obvious preexisting mental model shared by non-specialists

Strong disagree. Looking at the URL bar in Firefox vs Chrome is a great example of how Chrome nailed an "obvious preexisting mental model shared by non-specialists".

We can look at things like the design of door handles, and clearly see how the shape of the human hand influences the design. If we had tentacles, door handles probably would look more different.

The same thing applies to human minds (as opposed to hypothetical alien minds, or AIs). Humans all have a hippocampus, a prefrontal cortex, and other universal biological factors in cognition which influences HOW thoughts are formed.

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

#310

Post by jlawson »

xyzelement wrote: post #294
Majromax wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, most people (at least in the US) grew up around cars, so you expect a 20 year old and a 70 year old to grasp what a steering wheel is. For that matter, the steering wheel the 20 year old is using today is very similar to the steering wheel the 70 year old used 50 years ago. Nothing in computing has been so constant.

> For that matter, the steering wheel the 20 year old is using today is very similar to the steering wheel the 70 year old used 50 years ago. Nothing in computing has been so constant. That's exactly right, the car industry has done a remarkable job maintaining interface compatibility for over a century despite massive implementation changes. Someone who knew how to "hit the brakes" on a 1908 Model-T will be able to…

Not to be pedantic, but the Model T has a very different control system than modern cars.

There are three pedals and a throttle pusher on the wheel. The brake is on the right, the middle pedal is reverse. To accelerate, you work a combination of left pedal to select gear, handbrake/clutch, and a pusher for throttle on the steering wheel.

You would need retraining to go from this to a modern car or vice versa.

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