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Burying the URL

allenpike.com

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Re: Burying the URL

#301

Post by DanBC »

Discussing this article on HN is weird. Most people here miss the point which is "most users do weird incomprehensible things, and Google will tweak Chrome to be useful to most people, not to the tiny number of technologically competant users".

Most people barely know what an URL is.

See also the time Google removed the + operator from search. Hardly anyone used that operator, and it was used incorrectly most of the time.

It's a shame that Google do not release their test data but it's obvious that they have a huge amount of user clicking and typing that they can analyse.

Re: Burying the URL

#302

Post by nnnnni »

joelanman wrote: post #233
yaph wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine using a graphical browser without an address bar. Regarding the possible benefits, I think phishing would become a lot easier, if users don't see the URL any more, anyone can still link to phishing pages.

phishing should actually be harder - the only thing now shown is the domain - the important part, without the whole path to add noise

I think that a better way to do it would be to make the domain bold and the rest of the URL lighter.

Re: Burying the URL

#303

Post by userbinator »

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.

When you stop by the local coffee shop, do you take note of what its address is?

That's like clicking on a bookmark. But when you need to tell someone else (who is unfamiliar with the district) where that coffee shop is, or vice-versa, that information becomes really important. Hiding the path and showing only the domain is like telling someone "it's in California".

On the other hand, if the URL is displayed, then there will be many who take note of the fact that it changes whenever they click on a new link or go back/foward, and it makes them mentally associate "that piece of text" with "this page I'm looking at" - they don't even need to know the term URL to do that. It's a bit unfortunate that browsers don't have "Address:" next to it anymore, because that would've made this association so much easier (someone seems to have made the same observation almost ten years ago, although it was FF vs IE: http://cheeaun.com/blog/2004/09/address-label-for-address-ba... ). Having made that association, they can then tell you exactly where a page they're looking at is, and vice-versa.

Re: Burying the URL

#304

Post by ams6110 »

The original (stated) purpose of Chrome was to be a new competitor to force ALL browsers to get better. In that I think they succeeded.

Now the purpose of Chrome seems to be as a data-collection and ad-delivery platform for Google. Admittedly, many folks navigate the web by google search already, but this is a step towards making that the ONLY way, at least if you're using Chrome.

Re: Burying the URL

#305

Post by bentcorner »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #228
antr wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to be a cinic: if the Chrome team sees that users use Omnibox/Google more to got to the desired URL, that would be a positive thing (for them). Why type the URL when you can go via uncle Google?

I can actually imagine a lot of users liking that - many people I've seen using a browser will just type stuff in to Google's homepage search box and then follow links. The classic example, yes I've seen it, is people typing Hotmail/Live/Outlook in to Google and then following the link rather than typing in the address [my 8yo did this recently for another site]. For many-many users the web entry point is the search…

I think that's an ok thing. I used to scoff at this sort of behavior but no longer - users who do this are just doing the same thing I do in the address bar, except they're taking up a whole page and an extra click. The address bar is probably too ephemeral and hard to understand.

It's probably a good hint that browsers could find success at imitating a similar search interface in the new page/new tab UI. Offer a clean page with a text search field, with very fast results that have good context.

Chrome and FF have a "View History" page with search, but it seems to be fixed by date and with no way to sort for relevance. IE doesn't appear to have a history search (I think this is baked into Windows search instead?).

Re: Burying the URL

#306

Post by muaddirac »

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #282
muaddirac wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think you are confusing discoverability with navigation. I'm not. I understand why it's hard to swallow though, because I think a valid criticism of the REST architectural style is that it removes bookmark-ability. > It's good if you can discover all content through hypermedia, but why should you prevent direct access?! Well, precisely because direct access implies that out-of-band knowledge is driving the intera…

Well, I am no priest of REST, but I think you are completely misinterpreting Mr. Fielding's point. That whole paragraph that you are quoting there is all about discoverability, at least that's how I interpret it. I mean, he even uses the word "bookmark", a concept which you seem to claim is incompatible with the approach. There is nothing in there that suggests you have to start at the one global canonical URI (which…

Very good points, and you've corrected a misconception I've had for a while now.

Still think my original point stands - that this UI decision isn't so different from entering a service for the first time.

> To solve that, you need a more stable addressing system instead of just not using addresses at all

I think this is generally solved with wishy-thinking and redirects.

Re: Burying the URL

#307

Post by albertsun »

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 might test well in metrics, but this is the kind of thing that points out why purely data based decision making can be dangerous. A-B testing assumes users will all behave the same in the future as in the past. But people's future behavior is dependent on their present behavior and experiences.

With repeated exposure to URLs more people will learn how URLs work. Hiding URLs means that people will never be able to learn.

Re: Burying the URL

#308

Post by alternize »

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've been using it for a few hours now. while my initial reaction was "how could they!", after a while, it's not that annoying anymore.

I can now see the reasoning behind it - many people I know do not actively use the url bar except for searching. even when they want to check their facebook or favorite website, they just enter "facebook" in the url and use the (google) search results to get where they want to. for such users, the search box is much more important than the url itself, so why waste the UI space...

Re: Burying the URL

#309

Post by billmalarky »

nnnnni wrote: post #302
joelanman wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

phishing should actually be harder - the only thing now shown is the domain - the important part, without the whole path to add noise

I think that a better way to do it would be to make the domain bold and the rest of the URL lighter.

Chrome already sort of does that. I guess it could be emphasized further.

Re: Burying the URL

#310

Post by mreiland »

albertsun wrote: post #307
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 might test well in metrics, but this is the kind of thing that points out why purely data based decision making can be dangerous. A-B testing assumes users will all behave the same in the future as in the past. But people's future behavior is dependent on their present behavior and experiences. With repeated exposure to URLs more people will learn how URLs work. Hiding URLs means that people will never be able to…

I already really dislike that win7 hides the filepath, and lies about it in many cases.

It makes me click on the bar to actually see where I'm at in the filepath, please don't take that design mistake and apply it to the web.

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