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Burying the URL

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Re: Burying the URL

#251

Post by Dylan16807 »

noisy_boy wrote: post #126
chrismorgan wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shifting the add-on bar to an extension is the right way for Firefox to head. The core product is simplified, removing something that a very small fraction of its target audience want, and the feature is shifted into an extension. You can still have it, but it’s shifted out of the core. The maintenance burden is then shifted from its being something that might be accidentally broken in the core product to a separate…

A browser doesn't have much in terms of visible elements, (excluding the main display area) beyond the various toolbars and buttons on them. If we start considering even those as optional, where does the simplification end? Then why don't we take out the bookmark bar, navigation bar, menu bar, status bar etc and attain supreme simplification by displaying a single text field which should lead to search. Surely the us…

>why don't we take out the bookmark bar

Go for it, show bookmarks on the new tab page.

>navigation bar

It could certainly stand to be shrunk at the very least.

>menu bar

Yes please, I have my browser configured to no menu bar, saves a nice bit of space.

>status bar

There's a popup when I hover a URL and otherwise I get to save space.

More on point, the add-on bar was a dumb idea and behaved weirdly. Good riddance. While a built-in real status bar would be nice, an extension to provide one is pretty good too.

Re: Burying the URL

#252

Post by leoc »

blablabla123 wrote: post #142
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…

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…

> I somehow like looking at URLs but am I supposed to edit them as an end user or draw conclusions from their look?

People shouldn't be drawing conclusions from the URL (apart from the query string and the domain part, but that latter is a whole other story). The URLs are supposed to be unchanging and not break, and that's strongly incompatible with having them contain human-meaningful information. And in particular (though not exclusively) with using path-segments to communicate a tree structure for your website. Such tree structures are inevitably torn down and replaced over time on most long-active websites (especially those which are the public-facing homepage of a long-lived organisation), and the result of placing them in the URL is inevitably link breakage. Hiding the URL by default is therefore good, as it should help to prevent the user from seeking meaning in the URL or the site owner from placing it there.

And links (with the exceptions noted above) shouldn't contain meaningful information for automated use either: it's Hypertext As The Engine Of Application State, not Link Structure As The Engine...

(Tree-structured site guides are fine and useful means of navigating, by the way; they just don't belong in the URL.)

Re: Burying the URL

#253

Post by jasonlotito »

RegW wrote: post #224
StavrosK wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it asks you when you first run it.

Hmm, so I guess their stats are likely to be skewed. Being based on the choices of those that don't know or care how the web works.

This is only in Canary, so these are choices being made by people who are opting in to using that version. It will be skewed toward early adopters.

If you are using Canary and NOT reporting back, you don't know how Canary works and shouldn't be using it.

Re: Burying the URL

#254

Post by chillingeffect »

scottjad wrote: post #200
Swizec wrote: post #19

As a power user, the only time I care about URL's is when copy-pasting and when developing web apps. I like to explicitly know what I'm copy pasting. It offends my personal sensibilities to make websites with ugly links. Other than that ... I don't know. I can't decide how I feel about this, but I can't help but think that I really don't care about the URL being accessible. Not like I ever do anything with it.

Here are some use cases I thought of: go to the top level domain directly instead of hunting and hoping that they have a link there going up several directories on an ftp site go from reddit.com/r/starcraft to reddit.com/r/nba go from a foo.github.io/bar docs page to github.com/foo/bar instead of hunting, and hoping, for a link increment the page number on a blog by several instead of clicking next repeatedly prepend…

Yup. As well as basic stuff such as, "wow, I just found myself on a cool page after clicking through a few links. What website is this?"

This change was akin to Microsoft removing the Start menu.

And it highlights the importance of open source software.

And demonstrates how greed (seriously, how much MORE money and success does google need at this point) betrays quality.

Keep using duckduckgo, everyone!

Re: Burying the URL

#255

Post by catwork »

Part of Chrome's appeal is its as an IDE for web development. Technical support is also more difficult where an end user cannot easily locate a URL. Hiding URLs by default is going to detract from the value of Chrome for a technical audience.

Re: Burying the URL

#256

Post by TheLoneWolfling »

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 don't know what Windows version you're running, but on the Windows 8 partition on my laptop, it shows the full path with prettified separators, showing the plaintext when you select the path.

And that same way of doing things would work quite well for a web browser, IMHO.

There are many annoyances I have with Windows, and Windows 8 specifically. That is not one of them.

Re: Burying the URL

#257

Post by TheLoneWolfling »

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?

Most of the time when something is changed with the previous behavior retained as a flag, sooner or later the flag will be removed.

The default behavior is generally indicative of how the devs want things to be used.

So no, not an actual solution. A temporary one, yes, but not longterm.

Re: Burying the URL

#258

Post by forgottenpass »

kevingadd wrote: post #203
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…

I respect that Google is disciplined about shipping features like this only after extensive testing, but it troubles me that despite obvious problems with this approach - like the external appearance of funneling users to Google search for all their web navigation (regardless of whether this was an intentional purpose behind the design) - it made it all the way through design, implementation, testing, and code review…

it made it all the way through design, implementation, testing, and code review without anyone realizing what the reaction would be.

Oh I don't think that's true at all. They just know that they're big enough that it doesn't matter what a bunch of internet weenies think when most of their audience doesn't know or care enough to understand the UI change, let alone grasp the business interests that drive it.

Re: Burying the URL

#259

Post by TheLoneWolfling »

Crito wrote: post #80
snewman wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Old cars: you could fix it yourself. Modern cars: rarely need fixing; also much more efficient. I know which I prefer.

> Modern cars: rarely need fixing; also much more efficient. That really has nothing to do with what is being discussed though. The reliability and efficiency of modern cars are consequences of advances in technology and engineering, not user interface redesign.

Umm...

Actually, yes, it is relevant.

A large chunk of the reason behind the efficiency in particular of newer cars is the addition of those opaque black boxes. Being able to have the car's engine directly tune things according to complicated algorithms, instead of power-hungry mechanical controls, etc, etc.

Re: Burying the URL

#260

Post by insky »

DanBC wrote: post #168
saraid216 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood the claim that the omnibar was a usability problem. It's really only a problem if you have an ideological issue with preferring to search Google... which isn't a usability issue.

Not so much a usability problem but a climate change nightmare. All of those people entering partial URLs in the omnibox, causing a Google search, releasing CO2 is terrible when they could be using local bookmarks.

Good point. I wondered why this didn't happen under my Chrome, but I have a different search engine and have unchecked the box under Settings->Advanced->Privacy.

I'm not sure what gets sent with regards to spelling helpers? That could almost be like a keylogger? I wonder how it works. I've turned that off also.

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