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

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

#431

Post by buttersbrian »

marcosdumay wrote: post #427
buttersbrian wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As another said -- chrome was dominant before Android was a player. Firefox blew a hole in the IE wall. Then chrome came along and was more acid compliant, leaner (Ux/ui), faster, and it's approach of per-tab processes was superior to a lock-up prone Firefox, or IE.

Firefox required admin rights to install on Windows, what locked most of the user base out of its reach. Chrome got his market by silently installing as the IE rendering engine, and by being bundled with other software.

I don't think there was anything silent, IMO.

The other biggest factor IMO Chrome greatly focusing on developer tools --> eventually stealing away firebug dev, and in turn taking the throne as the developer browser of choice.

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

#432

Post by tbodt »

sschueller wrote: post #420
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…

Sorry but if you can't teach non technical users new things they shouldn't be 100 meters near a computer. It will result in even more technical dept and people with over confidence thinking that they know what they are doing. We don't need to idiot proof the world. We need to educate the idiots.

Unfortunately this doesn't scale to a billion idiots

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

#433

Post by tbodt »

ffwd wrote: post #141
mkl wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, that's their argument for doing it. Most users don't understand the different bits of a URL, to know whether it's from the site they think it's from. See (huge) previous discussion from two months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23516088 Personally, for my own purposes, I think hiding any bit of the URL is incredibly inconvenient. Already hiding the www. is seriously annoying. I will switch this n…

Just fyi, the google chrome plugin "Suspicious Site Reporter" reverts the url back to how it always was, with http:// and www and everything else. It's very lightweight and you can just leave it on, don't have to report anything or do anything with it. Hopefully it remains this way _forever_, even with these newer changes as well.

Or you can right click the omnibox and choose "Always show full URLs"

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

#434

Post by baby »

Omg. I believe safari does that and I freaking hate it. I see how it makes every website act like an app, but these have real user values: you wouldn’t design a folder explorer by hiding where you are in the tree. Oh wait, actually that’s what macOS does already...

On the other hand, this is the default behavior on mobile browsers and it doesn’t seem to disturb anyone.

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

#435

Post by baby »

rchaud wrote: post #397
bzb4 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That extra human readable section is not added for humans. It’s added for SEO. That is, for Google.

The URL structure is usually mirrored on the actual website by way of clickable breadcrumbs or as navigational information architecture. People understand slashes indicate folders and directories, even though database-driven CMSes do not use folder structures. They can figure out that they can go one level from from "example.com/cars/toyota" by removing the "/toyota"

I don’t agree with the breadcrumb mirroring. It’s orthogonal. You can have breadcrumb or not and it wouldn’t matter to the user if it mirrors the url or not.

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

#436

Post by baby »

worble wrote: post #219
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…

>The rest, `item?id=24156986`, is meaningless to a human Removing Url's is throwing the baby out with the bathwater though. Take Stack Overflow for an example: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/53302536/vue-test-utils-... The only thing you need to actually get to the question is https://stackoverflow.com/questions/53302536 , but they intentionally add an extra human readable section for laypeople. If google actual…

These are for SEO not for users navigating on the page. It wouldn’t be practical for the user to read information there as they are navigating the page anyway.

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

#437

Post by baby »

sah2ed wrote: post #261
bzb4 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That extra human readable section is not added for humans. It’s added for SEO. That is, for Google.

> That extra human readable section is not added for humans. It’s added for SEO. That is, for Google. It is indeed for humans. After all, the whole purpose of SEO is to show up on the 1st or 2nd SRP for web searches conducted by humans.

Not for humans browsing the site currently (which is the distinction that matters)

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

#438

Post by tbodt »

dessant wrote: post #127
youngtaff wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google plans to change that as part of it's current focus on Core Web Vitals and non-AMP sites will be eligible to be in the Top Stories carousel if they're fast enough

That's interesting, here's [1] an overview of Web Vitals. Do you have a source for Google's timeline to enable this for Top Stories? [1] https://web.dev/vitals/

I don't remember the source but I've heard 2021.

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

#439

Post by marcosdumay »

buttersbrian wrote: post #431
marcosdumay wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox required admin rights to install on Windows, what locked most of the user base out of its reach. Chrome got his market by silently installing as the IE rendering engine, and by being bundled with other software.

I don't think there was anything silent, IMO. The other biggest factor IMO Chrome greatly focusing on developer tools --> eventually stealing away firebug dev, and in turn taking the throne as the developer browser of choice.

Chrome was already very popular by the time it became any good (compared to Firefox).

But even sooner than they investing in dev-tools, they made a killing from tab isolation right at a time when Firefox had most of its stability problems.

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

#440

Post by baby »

wwweston wrote: post #390
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…

> many URLs are meaningless to humans past the domain. I'd argue this confuses meaningful with degrees of legibility . And also that it ignores how certain significant margins of users do learn this stuff. `item?id=24156986` is immediately meaningful at least at one level: you know at some level you're looking at a specific item resource under the domain news.ycombinator.com. Processing which one requires a lot more…

I think these are the only meaningful usecases:

- differentiating homepage from not-homepage

- differentiating subdomains when folder structure is used instead of a subdomain

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