Live data from Hacker News

Burying the URL

allenpike.com

21–30 of 376 posts

Re: Burying the URL

#21

At first I was concerned by this, but as long as the URL is accessible - by clicking the domain chip - I could see this being a good thing. Most non power users never directly manipulate URLs, so there's no real need to display them so prominently. The domain on the other hand is important, and showing only it without the rest of the URL serves to significantly emphasize it. As long as there remains a power user togg…

From an IT support perspective, it could become a minor annoyance. It's not uncommon for support to request the URL or have the user manipulate it in some way. Now they have to instruct the user to click on a button to reveal the URL, but only after identifying if the user is using a browser or the version of Chrome that hides the URL. (And if IT is ignorant of this new feature, they are going to be very confused when the user is arguing with them "There is no URL in the box!")

Re: Burying the URL

#22
The post implies that Google wants to get rid of URLs the core of the Internet but that's not true -- Google wants links, latest example is the possibility to deep link into any Android app via URLs.

Re: Burying the URL

#23
post #2

It seems that the latest Canary has toggled the flag back off for now. If you're curious to try the feature so you can provide feedback on its future, go to chrome://flags and turn on "Enable origin chip in Omnibox".

It may be gone for now, but someone who made this decision is still making decisions in that team. Honestly, I went OMG when I read the post.

Dogfoodable Servo based browser arrives in Q4 this year according to https://github.com/mozilla/servo/wiki/Roadmap. Probably the most important project on the internet right now.

Re: Burying the URL

#24

I somewhat expected this, given the trend of where things seem to be heading with software these days. In the name of "usability" configuration is removed, UIs are "simplified", and gradually the choice and freedom of the user is degraded. Opportunities to make mistakes and learn from them, or to explore and discover, a chance for users to grow . Dumbing-down software only encourages more of the same. The "senior try…

You seem to assume that people are looking to learn and grow their computer abilities. Learning takes an open mind, which isn't the case for most people.

Ease of use enables the user to perform actions with more impact. Think of it as Python vs C. You need a lot more knowledge to get started with C, but you can customize almost every aspect of your program. With Python, you lose some customizability, but you can do a lot more in a lot less time and understanding. If you need the customization and you have the knowledge, you can also build C extensions for Python (which would correspond to the chrome flags).

I'm not saying I'm for this change or not. Testing it out on real users will decide its fate, I'm quite ambivalent about it. I'm just speaking for ease of use in general.

Re: Burying the URL

#25
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.

And that has got to be the most irritating thing about Google these days, they mangle the URLs in their search results to the point where I can't get a clean URL sometimes, at least not without some real work.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd...

Instead of

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_resource_locator

Is really irritating.

Re: Burying the URL

#26
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.

> the only time I care about URL's is when copy-pasting

This is like saying the only time I care about electricity is when I need to power something. The fact that there's a universal textual way to refer to and link everything – like via copy and paste – is precisely why the web is so powerful.

Re: Burying the URL

#27
post #23
post #2

It seems that the latest Canary has toggled the flag back off for now. If you're curious to try the feature so you can provide feedback on its future, go to chrome://flags and turn on "Enable origin chip in Omnibox".

It may be gone for now, but someone who made this decision is still making decisions in that team. Honestly, I went OMG when I read the post. Dogfoodable Servo based browser arrives in Q4 this year according to https://github.com/mozilla/servo/wiki/Roadmap . Probably the most important project on the internet right now.

Awesome to see that target. I'm kind of tempted to start learning Rust so I can use and contribute to Servo when that day comes.

Re: Burying the URL

#28
post #15

So now users are supposed to click the embedded +1 button to share a link instead of copy pasting the url into their chat network of choice. Actually I'm surprised this hasn't been built into any desktop browser or os yet as it is on android. Anyway, I think most people don't care about the URL looks like at all as long as you can link the page somehow, the recent rise of all URL shorteners kind of proves that, not e…

> Actually I'm surprised this hasn't been built into any desktop browser or os yet as it is on android.

Safari in OS X Mavericks has Tweet/Facebook/etc https://www.apple.com/safari/images/overview_builtin_2x.jpg

Re: Burying the URL

#30
post #5

If you click the chip, it reveals the URL, too. May not be great, but it's not completely gone (which the article seems to indicate).

Yeah and I'm sure CMD+L still works.

Still, I can't imagine it will make web dev easier if the URL isn't always plainly visible.

Post reply on HN