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Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

bugs.chromium.org

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Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#451

Post by daveFNbuck »

Spivak wrote: post #429
redleggedfrog wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this point is important. We need to get the web/internet as simple as changing channels on a television. That is what the masses are capable of.

I really don't know why you consider that a bad thing. It's a little bit silly that users have to know or care about what a domain/url is. Like if a user is just trying to get to, say, CNN, can they not just type in CNN and have the browser do the rest. Why put additional barriers? Would we really design this system today?

We basically have the system you describe. I type CNN and the browser brings up a page of things that match my query. The first one is CNN. If I visit CNN a lot, my new tab page will have a thumbnail of the CNN website and I end up with an even simpler UI of just clicking a picture.

Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#452

Post by LocalH »

Donzo wrote: post #422
mehrdadn wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, what? Could you expand on this? What do you mean by doing away with URLs?

From the linked article: "I don’t know what this will look like, because it’s an active discussion in the team right now," says Parisa Tabriz, director of engineering at Chrome. "But I do know that whatever we propose is going to be controversial. That’s one of the challenges with a really old and open and sprawling platform. Change will be controversial whatever form it takes. But it’s important we do something, bec…

They seem to view the Internet as their platform, given the way they like to bully the tech sphere.

Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#453

Post by markovbot »

ringshall wrote: post #365
TomK32 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

don't forget the http://

Ah, the ol' h-t-t-p-colon-slash-slash-slash-dot-dot-org

h-t-t-p-colon-backslash-backslash-doubleyou-doubleyou-doubleyou-dot...

I've heard people say "backslash" when they insist on reading out the whole URL with protocol, which I'm pretty sure is the wrong slash, I honestly don't know, but I've never understood why people felt the need to say it at all. Do they type the protocol into the address bar when they visit sites?

Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#454

Post by masswerk »

UncleMeat wrote: post #430
masswerk wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A proposal for better security with domain names: The domain name system has been around for decades and it's a clever and proven system. It can – and should be – taught in school and, arguably, knowledge of it is, while not difficult to obtain, essential in our times. Additional ambiguity in this is probably not what we want. Arguably, the most sincere problems arise from mixed alphabets with Unicode domains and loo…

> Arguably, the most sincere problems arise from mixed alphabets with Unicode domains and look-alike characters/glyphs. No way. The most sincere problem is that hostnames do not enforce any binding to a real world identity that users can understand (nobody inspects certs) and that the most trustworthy component of a hostname is the second to the last section (right before ".com"). Humans tend to look at the front of…

Regarding the parsing of URLs, this is a common, but mostly counterintuitive argument: Take for example names in most western countries, addresses (street-zip-city-country), etc. Most of our most important identifiers work this way.

Regarding lacking binding of identity: On the other hand, this has been one of the most important features of the web, from the very beginning. Also, there is no way to setup a system, which will attribute to a single person in a readable and intuitive way. (E.g., names fail to do so.) Arguably, this should be left to (optional) extensions.

I'd argue, the knowledge required to parse a URI safely may be conveyed in couple of minutes. Why not enforce this knowledge? Why not have a URL-parsing note on the start screen of any browser? Why dumb down the system and introduce ambiguity – and by this even more insecurity – instead of educating users? URL-parsing is a vital skill, which can be acquired in less time than memorizing a basic table of partial addition results. Why do we still try to teach addition, if we can't teach URLs?

Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#455

Post by stcredzero »

abalone wrote: post #393

> This is a dumb change. No part of a domain should be considered "trivial". As an ISP, we often have to go to great lengths to teach users that "www.domain.com" and "domain.com" are two different domains... What ISPs teach their users anymore these days? Why the heck do we want to go back to that? Time for a modicum of historical perspective. If you care about usability this is clearly an improvement. This is part o…

If you care about usability this is clearly an improvement.

The cost/benefit doesn't work out. It's a usability improvement, but it comes with a huge cost, where many, many sites have the fundamental function of a URL -- that of an address/specifier across the internet -- basically broken. The person who implemented this change either didn't work out the cost, or decided they didn't care.

Everyone is hyperventilating over contrived "the principle of it all" examples.

How would you feel if primary keys in your database started to change their semantics? How would you feel if your phone started to change the telephone number it dialed? I guess we're kind of alright with the message app editing our messages as we type them. Now we're supposed to adapt to our tools, not the other way around, and insisting on tools doing what we say is "pedantry."

Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#456

Post by markovbot »

jlarocco wrote: post #286
meowface wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But when using HTTP(S), you nearly always expect the "www." domain and the root domain to host the same content. It's very, very rare that this isn't the case. Chrome appears to be hiding "m.", too, which is unfortunate (as would api. or beta. being hidden), but "www." is such boilerplate for HTTP at this point that I don't think it matters whether it's displayed or not.

I think it matters, quite a bit actually. My expectation as a user is that the URL I see in the bar is the URL of the site I'm visiting. If it's not accurate, then why show it at all?

Because the second level domain is far more important than the subdomain. The second level. www.example.com and example.com usually have the same contents, but are always controlled by the same group.

Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#457

Post by zanmat0 »

lmedinas wrote: post #344
wolco wrote: post #311

I hope people start moving from chrome to firefox. The standards they pushing are harming the web in ways.

i use Firefox @ work and @home for serious stuff. The only reason i don't use Firefox 100% is due to the Android app which is a lag fest. Mozilla needs to put more resources on Android.

Have you tried Firefox Focus?

Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#458

Post by feross »

abalone wrote: post #393

> This is a dumb change. No part of a domain should be considered "trivial". As an ISP, we often have to go to great lengths to teach users that "www.domain.com" and "domain.com" are two different domains... What ISPs teach their users anymore these days? Why the heck do we want to go back to that? Time for a modicum of historical perspective. If you care about usability this is clearly an improvement. This is part o…

This change goes far beyond merely hiding the "www." prefix. I'm not making up these examples:

1. "m.tumblr.com " and "tumblr.com " are BOTH displayed as "tumblr.com" even though they're literally different sites.

2. "www.example.www.example.com" displays as "example.example.com" which means all "www" subdomains, whether leading or not are being stripped out.

3. In the extreme case, "www.m.www.m.example.com" shows up as "example.com" which is pretty misleading.

Usually, the Chrome team is very thoughtful about decisions that impact security. I'm surprised this was released in such a half-baked state. I hope this is not an indication of how Google's plan to "kill the URL" will work out.

Re: Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL

#459

Post by Donzo »

masswerk wrote: post #414
Donzo wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason why Google is doing this is because they are slowly trying to do away with URLs, as direct traffic is probably their greatest untapped segment. Google is trying to get users to go through their doorway pages, which is exactly the kind of thing for which they penalize publishers. Pay attention to when you enter direct addresses, let's say from a device/media subscription authorization page. The autosuggesti…

Compare yesterdays Ars Technica piece, https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/09/google-wants-to-get-... As a comment reads there, do they want to reintroduce AOL keywords? Edit: May we expect a non-standard subdomain "google-remote", which is more of a protocol-extension and will be also hidden?

"Their complexity makes them a security hazard."

GTFOH! HANDS OFF!

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