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Google resumes its attack on the URL bar, hides full addresses on Chrome 86

androidpolice.com

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Re: Google resumes its attack on the URL bar, hides full addresses on Chrome 86

#401

Post by RonanTheGrey »

pkamb wrote: post #321

The example url in the article is: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL#Internationalized_URL which is shortened in the address bar to: > en.wikipedia.org at the VERY least, I wish they would instead use: > en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL Same for Twitter and Reddit URLs, specifically. Don't hide the username or the subreddit.

Those are two examples where the URL is canonical and shouldn't be shortened.

There are probably many, many more. Very often the only place you can find the date of a news story is in the URL due to them using some version of Wordpress but not putting the date in the article past a certain age (F YOU, Guardian).

Google has clearly thought this through and decided that whatever they're getting out of this is FAR MORE IMPORTANT than the best interests of their users.

And that should make everyone suspicious.

Re: Google resumes its attack on the URL bar, hides full addresses on Chrome 86

#402

Post by RonanTheGrey »

benatkin wrote: post #305

It's a problematic change, but is actually more usable. Now as a developer, I don't have to worry about changing the URL too much, in order to enable deep linking and the back button. I also don't have to worry about the unsightly but useful query parameters on a search page. This should become the new standard. It's not like the mailboxes that the USPS is removing, ostensibly in response to declining mail volume. Th…

> I don't have to worry about changing the URL too much, in order to enable deep linking and the back button. I also don't have to worry about the unsightly but useful query parameters on a search page. This should become the new standard.

I've been a web developer for both small and large companies for over 20 years and can assure you I have never worried about such things.

This is a false flag.

Re: Google resumes its attack on the URL bar, hides full addresses on Chrome 86

#403

Post by RonanTheGrey »

p1mrx wrote: post #336
magicalist wrote: post #70

The Chromium blog post (which points out that like Safari on the Mac there's a setting now (not just a flag) to disable it): https://blog.chromium.org/2020/08/helping-people-spot-spoofs...

"Always show full URLs" is such a breath of fresh air. It eliminates all the URL butchering (e.g. inconsistent hiding of http/https) that Chrome had been doing for more than a decade. Though I'm not seeing the option by default on a fresh install of Chrome 86; hopefully that's just a rollout glitch.

What would be even more honest is that when people first install that version, they're asked what they want that setting to be.

It would be interesting to see the results.

Re: Google resumes its attack on the URL bar, hides full addresses on Chrome 86

#404

Post by RonanTheGrey »

kmeisthax wrote: post #203
avodonosov wrote: post #159

Even today's protocol hiding is so inconvenient, who is making these decisions, do the use computers regularly?

The average user sees http://123.45.67.89/~sk/microsoft.com/techsupport as a legitimate Microsoft website. That's what this change is intended to fix: users that see a domain in any part of the URL as being valid. They want to change it to only show the part that's actually security relevant. If you tell the average user "Look for Microsoft in the URL", and they find it in the path, they're going to fall for a phishi…

HIDING the URL doesn't seem to be the most obvious solution to this, to me.

Re: Google resumes its attack on the URL bar, hides full addresses on Chrome 86

#405

Post by cheez »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #314
cheez wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Firefox for casual browsing but heavy workloads need a better browser. So I have to use Chromium.

Firefox is a much more performant browser for actually rendering heavy pages.

I have 18 windows open in Firefox vs chromium that say otherwise. Why would I lie lol.

Re: Google resumes its attack on the URL bar, hides full addresses on Chrome 86

#406

Post by RonanTheGrey »

staticassertion wrote: post #259

I don't believe this is an attack. It hides the full address, but you can hover over it to see the whole thing, or even enable full addresses easily. I believe this is legitimately done to improve UX for users who may be phished. Tying this to AMP is a mistake.

"Won't somebody please think of the children?!"

Re: Google resumes its attack on the URL bar, hides full addresses on Chrome 86

#407

Post by cryptonector »

scott_s wrote: post #107

Something I haven't seen anyone here bring up yet: many URLs are meaningless to humans past the domain. For an example, look at the top of this page. The only semantic meaning in the URL for this post is `news.ycombinator.com`. The rest, `item?id=24156986`, is meaningless to a human. (But, of course, meaningful to HN's backend.) A lot of (most?) of the URLs on the web are not semantic . They're naked application look…

While many URLs are not designed for human consumption, many are, and many users are "trained" to some degree to understand them. But most importantly, users need some visual (or auditory, if sight-impaired) cue as to what kind of site their on, what domain at the very least. That's why HN puts the domainname of the authority of any posted links next to the title.

Regarding URLs that are not designed for human consumption, if they can possibly land in the status bar, then that's on their designers. Yes, of course, that's exactly what malicious players will do: design URLs that users can't parse -- but that's no reason to hide the bar altogether, but rather to hide parts of the URL (e.g., the scheme, the credentials, maybe the fragment, the query, even the path -- everything but the authority).

Re: Google resumes its attack on the URL bar, hides full addresses on Chrome 86

#408

Post by p1mrx »

pkamb wrote: post #324

They should fix this bug first: > Issue 1084406: Reappearance of "HTTPS://" causes URL text to move as you are selecting it > https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=108440...

The new "Always show full URLs" option fixes that, because http/https is always visible.

Re: Google resumes its attack on the URL bar, hides full addresses on Chrome 86

#409

Post by op03 »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #169
bitexploder wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are going back to AOL days. That didn’t work out so well for AOL in the long run. It’s kind of crazy to me you can’t do marketing now without at least discussing Google and Facebook these days. Edit: at least you knew you were the customer with AOL and paid them with clear terms for access.

The only difference is that Google has endlessly more clout and depth than AOL and my fear is that where AOL failed, Google may succeed. With Firefox succumbing this week, this is pretty horrible. I’m not a Richard Stallman type, but I think it’s come to the point where if you have even the slightest pretense of being a “free web” person, using Chrome or a Chromium-based browser has become unconscionable. This compan…

Its the opposite. They are on a down slope to irrelevance.

All these moves just turns up the temperature of the innovation cauldron, speeding up the pace of whatever will replace them.

More clout and depth has nothing to do with longevity. See every Empire that has evaporated in History.

Google will fail faster than it took most empires too for 2 reasons

1. Things move much faster these days. The time between rise and fall keeps shrinking for large orgs struggling to cope with the furious pace of change.

2. Complexity of playing empire defense grows exponentially with scale. You can't find enough skilled people quick enough. You cant solve increasingly complex issues with just your cash hoard. You can't escape increasing internal politics that slows the speed of innovation within. You can't escape external actors mistrusting every small move made etc etc etc.

So they will keep making such moves. And there is a way to speed up their decline - Encourage them and praise them for whatever they come up with.

Re: Google resumes its attack on the URL bar, hides full addresses on Chrome 86

#410

Post by abrowne »

polote wrote: post #112

The title is misleading and people don't read the article. Chrome is not hiding the bar address, it is only showing the domain in normal times, and showing the full url when you hover the bar Personally I find it better for non technical people, because they can focus on the domain only. For tech people you have the option to keep the full url visible at all time, which fixes the issue. As for people complaining abou…

I already have the "Always show full URLs", so you know what I prefer, but isn't this the same or similar to Safari's default behavior for a while? I don't hear anyone still complaining about that.
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