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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

#381

Post by xyzelement »

jlawson wrote: post #310
xyzelement wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Not to be pedantic, but the Model T

You got me! I actually knew this but wanted to make my point. Technically my post is correct because I focused on the operation of the brake pedal specifically but it definitely doesn't stand to this level of scrutiny :)

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

#382

Post by frostwarrior »

southerntofu wrote: post #375
gmurphy wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I designed[1] the Chrome Omnibox, and appreciate a lot of the conjecture in this thread and other places - I wish I was as devious as many people assume we were. The short version is that while many users can differentiate, it's more a problem of WHEN they differentiate - Chrome's entire design philosophy was around speed, and the omnibox was designed so that we had a simple destination that a user could focus on whe…

How do you feel that your invention was used to harm users and empower a quasi-global monopoly on search engines for the profit of tech billionnaire psychopaths and secret services? I don't think you had to have bad intentions (just like physicists and the atom bomb), but do you think the web is better for users without search boxes or search engine choices, and with Google forcing centralized AMP proxying down every…

Please, if we were to call out every developer who works or has ever worked in AnyEvilCorp® then almost no one comes out alive, maybe except RMS

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

#383

Post by curryst »

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…

> That being said, I think developers have made some things more difficult to understand than they should be. While people understand what an address is, calling it a URL adds an extra layer to learn (even if it is just terminology). URLs would also be easier to understand if they were more consistent from the end user's perspective, much like someone's mailing address, rather than an engineer's perspective.

I really don't think they're more difficult than they need to be to be functional. Users' mental model of "an address" is incoherent and often context dependent. Both a URL and an email address are an "address" to most users. The really lost ones will refer to the search terms they use to get to a web page as the "address".

I don't really see URLs as different from addresses. Their in descending size order rather than ascending like physical addresses, but the rest of it is fairly consistent. Most people spend drastically less time thinking about URLs than physical addresses though. We teach children how to break down physical addresses, and we do not teach them to break down URLs. It's entirely unsurprising URLs are more confusing.

> It sounds like it makes things easier for the user. Yet all that it really accomplishes is creating confusion for the end user since it fails to differentiate two concepts.

Phrased differently, it frees them from the requirement to be able to differentiate those two concepts. Much like how my calculator can give me the square root of a number without me needing to know how to actually calculate that.

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

#384

Post by Linosaurus »

rtsil wrote: post #314
Karellen wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 interfa…

This is exactly what I'm aiming to do with my guitar playing. To internalize the instrument so much that I can only focus on the music and not have to think about where and how I should use my fingers. I practice hard to be able to achieve this. The thing is, I see the value in my guitar playing. But when I code, much of my time is spent thinking about what I'm coding, and much less for the actual typing and editing,…

I found doing a few vim tutorials valuable as a reminder to look up some basic text manipulation in other editors. Like selecting a text rectangle with the keyboard, or cut and paste a single line.

Or that a text search is a perfectly reasonable way to move the cursor seven steps right to the next right paren.

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

#385

Post by tablespoon »

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…

> But users don't care about any of that. Users don't have the mental model to differentiate search terms and a URL. Chrome's decision was correct. It's surprising how long Firefox stuck with their bad (IMHO) design.

I think you're making the mistake of thinking of "users" as a monolithic, lowest common denominator group. There are users who think like you describe, and there are users who do not. Also catering to people's existing (perhaps oversimple) mental models ensures those models never change.

One of the PR issues with Firefox is that it has/had many features that suited the latter group, but decided to drop them to ape Chrome.

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

#386

Post by goohle »

shadowgovt wrote: post #205
goohle wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but keyboard has so many keys, which looks too similar and act in similar way. Why not to free user from typing? Just make one big button, called «Home», which will navigate user to Start of Internet, where he can select the site instead of searching it. Moreover, most of the time users are just watching video, so why not to launch a video stream right after powering of the device? Why we need to confuse user w…

> Moreover, most of the time users are just watching video, so why not to launch a video stream right after powering of the device? Why we need to confuse user with these buttons and Internet at all? I can tell you're being facetious, but you actually just described "television," and you should see the numbers on how many people buy cable instead of cutting the cord and subscribing to a handful of streaming services…

> I can tell you're being facetious, but you actually just described "television,"

My mom has 64" 4k TV with excellent image quality, but very often (right now, for example) she watches YouTube on her old CoreDuo PC with 24" screen, in small window. I don't know why.

My search bar shows me my past searches, instead of random suggestions, while my URL bar shows my past URL's, which saves tons of time for me when I need to find a past site or a past search. Also, I can quickly select another specialized search engine for a search.

I general, general people needs something simple, while a professional needs something powerful.

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

#387

Post by croes »

frostwarrior wrote: post #382
southerntofu wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you feel that your invention was used to harm users and empower a quasi-global monopoly on search engines for the profit of tech billionnaire psychopaths and secret services? I don't think you had to have bad intentions (just like physicists and the atom bomb), but do you think the web is better for users without search boxes or search engine choices, and with Google forcing centralized AMP proxying down every…

Please, if we were to call out every developer who works or has ever worked in AnyEvilCorp® then almost no one comes out alive, maybe except RMS

So the excuse is everybody else jumped from the bridge too?

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

#388

Post by BenjiWiebe »

kaetemi wrote: post #332
JoshTriplett wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tech-savvy people will just type "facebook.com" Tech-savvy people will type f, see that their browser completes "acebook.com", and press enter. That's a form of search, it's just more directly provided by the browser and unambiguously serving the user. (Ideally, tech-savvy people will type f and see no signs of facebook whatsoever, but that's an orthogonal issue.)

I type f, see Facebook, hit enter, and by the time I hit enter, Firefox swapped the history result with some search autocomplete that's not helpful at all.

There's an incredibly helpful setting for this. You can change it so the search suggestions are below your bookmark/history search.

Helps me tremendously in that exact issue.

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

#389

Post by Randosaurus »

frostwarrior wrote: post #382
southerntofu wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you feel that your invention was used to harm users and empower a quasi-global monopoly on search engines for the profit of tech billionnaire psychopaths and secret services? I don't think you had to have bad intentions (just like physicists and the atom bomb), but do you think the web is better for users without search boxes or search engine choices, and with Google forcing centralized AMP proxying down every…

Please, if we were to call out every developer who works or has ever worked in AnyEvilCorp® then almost no one comes out alive, maybe except RMS

It's a valid question to ask.

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

#390

Post by fknorangesite »

Karellen wrote: post #258
ryantgtg wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 interfa…

> You don't have to spare brain cycles to think about editing, your fingers just do it.

> 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.

I don't see anything here that is special or unique to vim or emacs.

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