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Burying the URL

allenpike.com

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Re: Burying the URL

#241

Post by alternize »

jurassic wrote: post #214
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…

> 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. Does Command+L still work? Because one click is too many.

yes, ^K and ^L still work the same as before

Re: Burying the URL

#242

Post by sophacles »

antris wrote: post #226
wwweston wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> URLs aren't high tech any more than the address to your house is When you stop by the local coffee shop, do you take note of what its address is? The users have an idea what URLs are, they just don't care.

Good analogy - Now that lots of places don't display their address, whenever I'm trying to figure out where a small shop in a strip mall is (particularly in a busy retail corridor where there are layered strip malls) even gps only helps so much. I end up spending a lot of effort to find it.

Similarly, ever tried to find your bud's house the first time in a subdivision, esp. at night? Those places all look the same and you drive past 4 times before you figure out one of the house's numbers and deduce it. The pizza guy the other night thanked me for having my number clearly displayed and lit, for the same reason.

Of course once you get into a building, it still remains annoying - I mean it's still not really obvious how the internal room/suite numbering works. That portion of addressing is totally up to the architect, and a lot of times is only intuitive after you know the space you're in (if ever).

Re: Burying the URL

#243

Post by Dylan16807 »

7952 wrote: post #235
userbinator wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

stop using Chrome That may solve this particular problem, but then which browser do you use instead? Firefox has had its history of similar changes (although you can still use extensions), Opera post-12 lost a ton of customisability, and IE, although appearing to have the fewest irritating interface changes, also has the most rendering quirks. (Personally I'm less concerned with the rendering quirks than the UI chang…

If 99% of what you do is in a browser then the browser has really taken the place of the operating system. And browsers are destined to follow a similar path to the OS. Remember when windows removed the full file path from explorer?

I remember when they split the full file path into clickable pieces for each directory, making the fully-visible path even more prominent and interactable than before.

When did they remove the path?

Re: Burying the URL

#244

Post by Dylan16807 »

deanclatworthy wrote: post #110
greggman wrote: post #88

This may be the reason I stop using Chrome even though I was a member of the team for 5 years. I NEED TO EDIT URLs. I need to copy and paste URLs. It was already annoying enough with it's removing of the protocol because sometimes I make a typo, try to edit it and it messes up and removes the protocol forcing me to edit it a 3rd time only after it goes as searches for something. Even as just a user I copy and paste U…

You can disable it by going to chrome://flags/#origin-chip-in-omnibox, change it to Disabled and restart chrome. Edit: Apparently a useful comment offering a solution to the parent's comment is not HN worthy?

Suggesting a 'solution' for something that only shows up on the canary build with a flag is missing the point. This is about defaults and the path forward.

Your comment didn't deserve a downvote but please don't assume it to be objectively useful.

Re: Burying the URL

#245

Post by z3t4 »

What is happening, but going so slow we do not notice it. Is that the www is merging with the application.

What annoys me though, is that we still use "word", "excel" and PDF. Well not me, but everyone else seem to do it. The HTML was a good invention, but too bad so few people use it.

Maybe hyper text sounds too old and and maybe a sexier name is all it needs to become popular again.

Re: Burying the URL

#246

Post by insky »

dredmorbius wrote: post #211
userbinator wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

stop using Chrome That may solve this particular problem, but then which browser do you use instead? Firefox has had its history of similar changes (although you can still use extensions), Opera post-12 lost a ton of customisability, and IE, although appearing to have the fewest irritating interface changes, also has the most rendering quirks. (Personally I'm less concerned with the rendering quirks than the UI chang…

I'm smelling a possible reboot of the browser paradigm. There are a few fundamental uses I see, and they're somewhat distinct: • Reading. For which stripping 99.99966% of Web formatting would be preferred. If I got content-heavy sites in a form similar to what Readability, Pocket, Instapaper, etc., delivers, I'd be much happier. Well, slightly less grumpy. I found it interesting that the Kobo tablet was, for a while,…

I agree there needs to be some reboot. Browsers could really help the user more. Regarding the apps breaking out, if we did away with tabs this could help, improve or rethink window management.

I was trying to think what's the difference between a 'frozen' web page / state and a bookmark. There is a difference, but for some pages, a bookmark is enough. I've always thought that tabs are really just perhaps a more convenient bookmark, but they are prone to abuse. Restarting Firefox with howevever many tabs, doesn't now reload all tabs like in the past. You loose state, but they are lighter in weight.

Re: Burying the URL

#247

Post by uptown »

cninja wrote: post #232
paulirish wrote: post #121

This is a new UI experiment that's deployed to a small fraction of users. We're looking at a few key metrics to see if this change is a net positive for Chrome users. (I imagine it may help defend against phishing). My personal opinion is that it's a very bad change and runs anti-thetical to Chrome's goals. I hope the data backs that up as well. But regardless, this change is far from shipping as the new default beha…

Opera did something similar back in 2010 in v11 with the opera:config#UserPrefs|HideURLParameter configuration variable. I found I was wanting the URL information often enough that I turned the feature off. I wonder the old Opera team had any metrics they gathered.

In Opera 20 I haven't found a way to re-enable fully expressed URLs. They adopted Webkit, and stripped out most of their configurability that was previously available from opera:config.

Re: Burying the URL

#248

Post by insky »

gcr wrote: post #234
dredmorbius wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm smelling a possible reboot of the browser paradigm. There are a few fundamental uses I see, and they're somewhat distinct: • Reading. For which stripping 99.99966% of Web formatting would be preferred. If I got content-heavy sites in a form similar to what Readability, Pocket, Instapaper, etc., delivers, I'd be much happier. Well, slightly less grumpy. I found it interesting that the Kobo tablet was, for a while,…

You seem to be asking for a generic "Tablet" interface, with multiple compartmentalized apps/processes for each of your use cases. Want to read? I either fire up the Adobe PDF reader and load something from my history or I open my email/dropbox/trello card and tap an attachment, which opens up the PDF reader. Almost all the interesting ideas in academia come in .pdf format, not .html. It just fits our use case better…

There is a problem here, in that the user might not know which app should handle $x.

Re: Burying the URL

#249

Post by sarreph »

"to a tidy little button that many users will never even realize is clickable." -- Are you sure this is the case? The way UI design is moving currently, users have become more expectant of subtle cues (i.e. iOS 7).

I would bet that someone who wanted the URL would click the URL-shortened button.

Re: Burying the URL

#250

Post by Tomis02 »

> Six years ago, Chrome and Firefox enabled search in the location field.

This goes to show that innovation is only what you can forcefully shove down your users' throats. Years before Chrome or Firefox even existed, Opera had this feature in 1998 by way of custom inline searches (e.g. type "g search this in Hoogle" in the address bar), and later defaulting to Google searches for non-urls. This didn't catch on until Mozilla and Google did it, just like most people don't buy into something until the "right" person tells them it's kosher. Software and hardware are practically fashion; outside of small minority groups that see the value of a product for themselves, you need to convince the majority through nice acts of salesmanship (making something look 'cool', or by simply using the 'take it or leave it' approach) to invest (time/will power/money) in something that will help them.

/rant

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