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Burying the URL

allenpike.com

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Re: Burying the URL

#181

Post by Houshalter »

brc wrote: post #150

Save the URL! Phone numbers suck and are a usability nightmare. But people are used to them and everyone understands it. No URL - no decentralized web. I understand why Google wants to place itself as the key search and directory for the web. I remember AOL Keywords 'go to www.webvan.com, AOL keyword : webvan', the ads would say on the radio. But the web is just a bunch of content hooked together with URLs. Heck, web…

But the important thing is, how often do you manually type in URLs? The URL is still there if you need to modify it or copy it or manually typeit in, it just isn't displayed prominently at the top of the screen. What are you actually losing?

Re: Burying the URL

#182

Post by blablabla123 »

anonymouz wrote: post #162
blablabla123 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny that people say not relying on URLs would be anti-web. IMHO this causation is made only on a selection of empirical observations. In fact I think, you could also draw other conclusions from empirical observations. Let's look at REST. Everybody is using it for HTTP APIs, or to be precise: everybody pretends to use it. Because, as many know, a REST API is only a true REST API, if it follows the HATEOAS parad…

Even if the URLs on HN or various newspapers are not very human friendly, at least one can copy and save them. How do you propose doing that without URLs?

I'm not saying that URLs are superfluous. But I think their function is exaggerated. Especially when it comes to Web Apps, but even in the case of articles in which hyperlinks are really useful and used a lot. They often seem like C pointers on which you better don't do any arithmetics. But unlike C pointers, often I cannot dereference them. ;)

Around '99 I did not rely on bookmarks, instead I saved interesting articles to my hard drive because links would break so often. Even today the problem remains and I don't even dare to say whether it got better or worse.

Maybe there are smarter concepts than HTTP-style URLs that we are not aware of yet. Might be also interesting regarding privacy, because many people actually do not want static hyperlinks to their personal information that last a million years.

Re: Burying the URL

#183

Post by ajanuary »

anoncow wrote: post #159

In this build, if I type in a well formed url, will it take me to google search results or the webpage the url was pointing to?

The url. The behavior of the box hasn't changed, just what it displays once a page is loaded.

Re: Burying the URL

#184

Post by alandarev »

jpatokal wrote: post #127
jpatokal wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For kicks, try replacing "software" with "automobiles" in your paragraph. The innards of a modern car are incomprehensible to all but "the few elite", and its interface goes a long way to hide all that complexity. I only have the vaguest idea how it works, and am perfectly happy to outsource its maintenance to professional mechanics, because all I care about is that it works . This should apply to computers. My famil…

Since this is getting misinterpreted: I'm not saying software (or computers) should be locked down, DRM'd to death and hidden. I'm saying that hiding complexity that does not serve the average user is desirable, and browsers are going down the same path now that cars did a hundred years ago. So for this specific case, if Chrome wants to hide URLs, go for it; and I'm sure there's a configuration toggle somewhere to tu…

Yes, yes, logical thinking, I even agree with it.

But imagine this happening, average users will become fully IT illiterate. Growing children will no longer know anything about computers, as they grew up in an environment where everything is hidden from them for sake of simplicity.

What will happen, after our generation(s) all get old, and the growned up illiterate children take place of improving world's technology?

Re: Burying the URL

#185

Post by jacquesm »

Bad move. A URL is a mental 'place' on the internet, you are somewhere and when you click a link you 'go' somewhere else. That feeling has been ingrained in the heads of the millions of users. Removing this will cause people to literally feel lost. The page does not currently tell you where you are, you already have that information and it is rightly 'out of band', there are matters of trust involved as well here.

Re: Burying the URL

#187

Post by Cthulhu_ »

antr wrote: post #176
nanidin wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely curious, what kind of metrics do you use to measure the effectiveness of a change like this?

I'm going to be a cinic: if the Chrome team sees that users use Omnibox/Google more to got to the desired URL, that would be a positive thing (for them). Why type the URL when you can go via uncle Google?

It kinda depends on the Chrome team's goals and whether those are absolute / which ones take precedence; I'd say in this case it's a compromise between usability / user-friendliness / not chasing away their users, and subtly increasing usage of google's search services.

Google has avoided being obvious about Chrome giving them more revenue up until now, as far as I'm concerned. Whether this will also swing in their favor or not, I can't be sure at the moment.

And with Safari on iOS 7 only showing the domain name, there is some precedence with the approach described in the article.

Re: Burying the URL

#188

Post by logicallee »

colordrops wrote: post #66
jpatokal wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For kicks, try replacing "software" with "automobiles" in your paragraph. The innards of a modern car are incomprehensible to all but "the few elite", and its interface goes a long way to hide all that complexity. I only have the vaguest idea how it works, and am perfectly happy to outsource its maintenance to professional mechanics, because all I care about is that it works . This should apply to computers. My famil…

A car has a simple goal: get you from one place to another. A computer does not. It's a general purpose tool that is near infinite in scope and possibility. The analogy is a complete failure.

I don't know man, an elevator, escalator, and moving walkway, all have the same purpose of getting you from one place to another - a car is infinitely more capable than all of these and does a whole lot of other manoeuvring and functions (storage, transportation, etc), to the point of requiring actual education and in fact literal adulthood just to drive. To say nothing of all the other functions in a car from radio to full electrical system, towing, etc.

You can call the function of a car "simple" and a computer infinite in scope, but a twelve year old is allowed to use the latter but not the former. This implies the scope (for mischief) is in some sense far narrower with the computer...

I do get what you're saying of course. But I feel like in the past decade or so we've moved past the car analogy :)

Re: Burying the URL

#189

Post by DanielBMarkham »

This is a terrible idea. I understand from a product standpoint that anything technical is a hindrance on the user experience, but the web is nothing if not URLs.

It'd be like taking the street addresses off houses and mailboxes simply because we had GPS now. Bad. Bad.

And I don't even want to start down the evil empire road, but I have to bring up the fact that getting rid of URLs just continues to solidify Google's desire to control user behavior. Click/speak a search phrase, see a list, and go to where we tell you. The internet is just a series of back rooms to Google's front door.

Don't do this, guys. I'm already half out the door with Chrome already. This would push me the rest of the way out and start making me actively tell people that Google is not looking out for their interests. I'm sure many other technical folks feel the same way.

Re: Burying the URL

#190

Post by Cthulhu_ »

wwweston wrote: post #166
drgath wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I NEED TO EDIT URLs. I'm using Canary with this option enabled, and all you have to do is click the domain box, then you can freely view, edit, and copy the URL. All this update does is hide the path portion of the URL. That's it, so IMO, this story is way overblown. Google isn't removing the URL bar, they're just acknowledging the fact that 99% of users don't need to see 99% of the URLs they visit on a daily basis…

> they're just acknowledging the fact that 99% of users don't need to see 99% of the URLs they visit on a daily basis. While we're talking about things we don't need, let's include this change . The fact is, for most of the last two decades we've already had a UI where users who don't care to attend to the URL don't have to, and users who care to notice can. What does this add? Nothing. But it does take away some leg…

Well yes (even if HN cuts those off), but you should also consider that all of the example pages you listed have the title and intent of the page clearly listed right on the page themselves.

Legible URLs are important when you need to decide to follow the link; once you're on the page, it's less important because there's bigger and more legible cues about the content right on the pages themselves then.

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