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Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

bugs.chromium.org

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Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#111

Post by rmason »

some_account wrote: post #93
soared wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99.9% of users have no idea what any of the words you just said mean. The change was made for them, not for you (the .1%)

Let's dumb down the internet even more because non technical users feel confused. Maybe we can actually remove the url field and just let the isp decide where they should go? They could offer a choice of 10 popular sites, like TV channels.. :)

Actually Google's long term plan is to do away with the URL completely, they just haven't figured out how yet.

https://www.wired.com/story/google-wants-to-kill-the-url/

Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#112

Post by geofft »

jwr wrote: post #30

This is idiotic and harmful. We already lost information about the protocol, because somebody believed it is "too complex" for users. Now we're losing other parts of the URL. It's making a joke of the SSL/TLS padlock, too — what exactly is the padlock supposed to tell me? It used to signify that a "known authority" certified that I'm connected to whatever I see in the URL bar. But now that browsers take liberties wit…

> It's making a joke of the SSL/TLS padlock, too — what exactly is the padlock supposed to tell me

That's why they're getting rid of it.

https://blog.chromium.org/2018/05/evolving-chromes-security-...

Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#113

Post by nine_k »

shawn wrote: post #47

Since everyone is wondering why, and since I happened to stumble across a reason during my time as a pentester, here you go: Spearphishing is still one of the most common ways of breaching a corporate network. If I target you, you will likely fall for one of my attempts. If you are a company rather than a person, my odds go way up, because I have N chances to trick someone rather than 1 (where N is roughly the number…

Do not hide the relevant info. Nearly every character in the URL is relevant info.

Instead, make the key part stand out, so even a cursory glance catches it instantly. It still allows more careful examination without clicking anywhere, or second-guessing.

Also, detect anomalies like www.google.com.hacked.domain.wtf, and show them in a really contrast way. Both Chrome and FF do this already.

I think Firefox shows normal URLs about right; they could add even more contrast.

Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#114

Post by Jyaif »

theprotocol wrote: post #19
ihuman wrote: post #10

Is this really a big deal? Don't many websites either redirect the www to the non-www, or the other way around?

It's about the principle. www is a valid subdomain. Browsers are supposed to be as unopinionated as possible since they are browsers , not mediators, and their job is to implement the standards of the web.

> their job is to implement the standards of the web.

Is there a standard saying how the URL should be displayed in the toolbar?

Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#115

Post by shrimp_emoji »

saudioger wrote: post #89
ThePadawan wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99.9% of motor vehicle users have no use for airbags. We still keep them for the .1%.

This is a very bad analogy. Anyone in a car crash potentially benefits from airbags without knowing anything about them (or even if they exist at all). The 99.9% of people who don't even know the difference between www and non-www will never directly benefit from seeing www, ever.

We must avoid friction between two types of user, 99.9%er and 0.1%er. We could have separate browsers aimed at each.

One browser should be dead simple, secure, and streamlined, aimed at the 99.9%s. Maybe it could be named after a metal.

Another browser, for the 0.1%s, should include technical arcana on screen and have more mutability, perhaps even at the cost of some performance and security. This one could be named after some kind of canid.

Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#116

Post by tribune »

wpietri wrote: post #100
soared wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99.9% of users have no idea what any of the words you just said mean. The change was made for them, not for you (the .1%)

You're missing jwr's point. He's arguing that this is harmful for users, especially the ones who don't know what the words mean. If I were solving this, I'd instead push to eliminate "www" altogether, not sweep it under the rug. It was useful circa 1996, when users might plausibly be using something other than the WWW with a browser. But it has become entirely vestigial.

How can you eliminate "www" altogether? It's just a subdomain like any other now

Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#117

Post by eclipxe »

crispyporkbites wrote: post #106
soared wrote: post #54

Why does this matter? Users don't care and its easier to remember/understand that all websites are just "x.com" rather than sometimes being "www.x.com". If you have some server/troubleshooting/network/dev problem with it, the missing info should be moved to developer tools. This is just removing data that is useless and confusing to 99.9% of users - whats the problem?

Because they are on www. and not *. What happens when you copy and paste that URL? Now every single website that wants to support Chrome needs to ensure that https://foo.com is always redirected to https://www.foo.com , or at least works as if it's www. It doesn't matter that most websites already do this, it's not standard, and represents Google breaking standards because they are big enough to do their own thing. I…

When you copy and paste, it has the whole URL - just like when you copy and paste now it will include http(s)://

Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#118

Post by parliament32 »

Considering a subdomain "trivial" is ridiculous... there's a difference between "www.example.com" and "example.com". Not only can they serve different sites, they can even have different DNS records!

It seems that "m." is also considered a trivial subdomain. So when a user clicks a link to a "m.facebook.com" uri, they'll be confused why FB looks different when the browser reports it's on "facebook.com".

I sincerely hope Firefox doesn't follow suit.

Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#119

Post by rkeene2 »

peterwwillis wrote: post #46

Google attempted a more extreme version of this four years ago: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/181657-google-moves-to... So they're doing it again, just slower: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/276454-google-wants-to... I'm pretty sure the eventual plan is to force everyone to browse the web using a version of the App Store, which we all know is incredibly secure, and never difficult to use.

I don't think your conclusion is correct, but the assertion that they want to get rid of the URL was posted on Hacker News a couple of days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17911009

Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#120

Post by pishpash »

fmpwizard wrote: post #83
shawn wrote: post #47

Since everyone is wondering why, and since I happened to stumble across a reason during my time as a pentester, here you go: Spearphishing is still one of the most common ways of breaching a corporate network. If I target you, you will likely fall for one of my attempts. If you are a company rather than a person, my odds go way up, because I have N chances to trick someone rather than 1 (where N is roughly the number…

if the idea is to protect users so that you don't end up clicking on https://news.ycombinator.com.myhackerdomain.com , you then open the attack of a platform where they offer custom subdomains, and you have https://original.blogger.com and then https://fake-original.blogger.com if I make them look the same, and the address will hide the subdomain, it looks like a step backwards in securing the web now, imagine the ac…

Google and parent both think they know better than you what is the "important" part of the URL.
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