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Chrome's experiment of hiding the URL is awful

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Re: Chrome's experiment of hiding the URL is awful

#21

Post by true_religion »

tty wrote: post #5
MAGZine wrote: post #2

> There is a reason they have always been front and center in all web browsers. Just because a design idiom had prevailed doesn't mean that it's correct or even good. People generally don't care about the url, they care about the site. This is like the browser saying "Starbucks" rather than "Starbucks, 3-1202 21st E, Falseville BC".

>This is like the browser saying "Starbucks" rather than "Starbucks, 3-1202 21st E, Falseville BC". Is it? What if "Starbucks" were your bank? What if you knew that apart from your bank there's non-bank entities mimicking your bank's looks in an effort to get your personal information? Would location still be irrelevant?

No one is mimicking your bank by putting the info to the right of the domain name.

They mimick the look of the bank and pick a domain like your.bankofamerica.getreadygo.com

Re: Chrome's experiment of hiding the URL is awful

#22

Post by fixermark »

I can't agree at all with the author's basic premise, which makes it hard to agree with the rest of the article.

>> URLs are the building blocks of the web.

The web has lots of building blocks (hyperlinks, requests, the underlying protocols, HTML, and on the modern web: Javascript and XmlHttpRequest). We hide most of that implementation detail from the user because it's non-essential to the task at hand.

How essential to the task at hand is the URL for most users? I may need a building's address to find it; once I walk into the building, do I need to continuously see that address?

>> Every page has a unique URL so that you can identify it and share it with other people.

That's a significant mis-statement of what a URL is. URLs have never been unique (witness www.foo.com vs foo.com), don't necessarily identify the page (witness dynamically-generated pages that are built with information from the client's cookies or state on the server), and their utility as a sharing tool is limited to what the server allows (witness access control). They're uniform resource locators... Nothing more, nothing less.

A URL is a tool. A useful tool, certainly. But I don't keep all my useful tools constantly on display on my desk; I keep them in toolboxes until I need them. So I'd say "See how this experiment pans out."

Re: Chrome's experiment of hiding the URL is awful

#23

Post by Pacabel »

MAGZine wrote: post #2

> There is a reason they have always been front and center in all web browsers. Just because a design idiom had prevailed doesn't mean that it's correct or even good. People generally don't care about the url, they care about the site. This is like the browser saying "Starbucks" rather than "Starbucks, 3-1202 21st E, Falseville BC".

While the existing approach may have its flaws, the wholesale removal of valuable information and functionality from the browser UI very likely isn't the right fix, either.

In my opinion, this is up there with the removal of the URL protocol, the removal of the status bar, the removal of the menu bar, the removal of the ability to disable JavaScript easily, and the other similar changes we've seen from Chrome and/or Firefox over the past few years.

This useful functionality is removed under the guise of "increasing usability" or "improving security" or some equally vague justification. So-called "average users" don't even notice any improvement, while power users are forced to endure a dumbed-down, less effective browser experience.

Re: Chrome's experiment of hiding the URL is awful

#24

Post by jsoffer »

micro-ram wrote: post #15
crashandburn4 wrote: post #12

I still think this is terrible. It flies against the principles of HATEOS, we have a design idiom that web developers /should/ be following to show us precisely where we are and what is happening in a website, why would we want to lose all of that information. I would be very unhappy if they removed the option to disable this from chrome, almost to the point that I'd consider changing browsers (and I like chrome...)…

> why would we want to lose all of that information. Because the url past the domain name is not for the user to be messing with most of the time. We the developers control everything to right of the first single slash. Maybe if it was hidden then it would force us to do a better job showing the users where they are in our sites with breadcrumbs and menus and at the same time keep them from trying to poke around in p…

Exactly. Right now, there's little or no difference between 'we the developers' and everyone else. Keep doing those changes, there will be one. Developers will be a privileged class. It's no surprise that some people may want to alter that balance.

Re: Chrome's experiment of hiding the URL is awful

#26

Post by adventured »

The nice thing about this, is that if it's really annoying to users, then Chrome will bleed market share to other browsers. The browser market has shown time and time again that when the developers mess up, they get punished and another browser rises to the top.

Re: Chrome's experiment of hiding the URL is awful

#27

Post by junto »

I hope I can always get access to the URL. I frequently have to switch the 'smart' geo tracking language selection in the querystring from de-DE that some shortsighted developer thought meant Germany === German to en-US or en-GB.

I'm looking at you Google as the worst offender. I swear that some developers have never left the US.

Geo location != preferred language.

Accept-Language header in my browser is telling you what I want. Listen to it.

Re: Chrome's experiment of hiding the URL is awful

#28

Post by dannyr »

I observed a bunch of high-schoolers using the web.

They go to Google to visit a site. They don't type URLs.

They go to google.com, enter "Facebook" and click on the 1st result.

Remember the Facebook Login fiasco?

http://readwrite.com/2010/02/11/how_google_failed_internet_m...

Google showed this post when people searched for "Facebook Login":

http://readwrite.com/2010/02/10/facebook_wants_to_be_your_on...

Re: Chrome's experiment of hiding the URL is awful

#29

Post by stan_rogers »

micro-ram wrote: post #15
crashandburn4 wrote: post #12

I still think this is terrible. It flies against the principles of HATEOS, we have a design idiom that web developers /should/ be following to show us precisely where we are and what is happening in a website, why would we want to lose all of that information. I would be very unhappy if they removed the option to disable this from chrome, almost to the point that I'd consider changing browsers (and I like chrome...)…

> why would we want to lose all of that information. Because the url past the domain name is not for the user to be messing with most of the time. We the developers control everything to right of the first single slash. Maybe if it was hidden then it would force us to do a better job showing the users where they are in our sites with breadcrumbs and menus and at the same time keep them from trying to poke around in p…

Um, no. If I want to share a link to a specific page, there's no reason to assume that I want to share any of the query string that is not actually required for somebody else to see the same page (like all of the tracky goodness that seems to be ubiquitous on the web these days) -- and for the same reason, there's no good reason for you to assume that I want to click on a "share" thingy on your page. And while breadcrumbs may aid me in navigation on my visit, the "how did I get here?" stuff has absolutely zero value to anyone who arrived at the page using a deep link. Oh, and if you make any of that compulsory, you won't get a link; your information just became valueless.

Re: Chrome's experiment of hiding the URL is awful

#30

Post by gcb0 »

fixermark wrote: post #22

I can't agree at all with the author's basic premise, which makes it hard to agree with the rest of the article. >> URLs are the building blocks of the web. The web has lots of building blocks (hyperlinks, requests, the underlying protocols, HTML, and on the modern web: Javascript and XmlHttpRequest). We hide most of that implementation detail from the user because it's non-essential to the task at hand. How essentia…

> We hide most of that implementation detail from the user because it's non-essential to the task at hand.

and then you have tons of security holes and bugs. Remember when browsers thought it was nice to hide loading from the user, and every site had to add "do not click submit twice" and such? what's next? one page apps relying on a share button and then having to write "do not share via the hidden URL"? ...google maps was like that for ages now that i think of that...

We should be coming up with ways to make information denser and more meaningful. not scarcer.

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