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Making the URL bar useful again: Where the Breadcrumb should have been all along

uxmag.com

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Re: Making the URL bar useful again: Where the Breadcrumb should have been all along

#51

Post by nanairo »

terrapinbear wrote: post #48
neilk wrote: post #17

This is a well-intentioned but terrible idea. This idea fails even on its own, since it presumes that URLs have structure, even within a particular site. So if you want to add a new page, even a one-off for a special occasion, then you have to start thinking about where it fits in your ad hoc URL/navigation scheme, too. Also, if you want to redesign navigation, you have to change all your URLs. URLs are brilliant bec…

Except that the URL string doesn't translate well in meat space. I cringe every time I hear someone on the radio or television read off a URL: "Log on to double 'U', double 'U', double 'U' dot mylonganduglywebsitename dot com, forward slash, long directory name, forward slash, yet another long directory name AND click on the partially hidden link". Surely there's verbal short hand that can be implemented?

For a start we should try to get rid of all those www: that will be the greatest help. The rest should be pretty easy: a website can always set a forwarding link so that, say: www.cocacola.com/offer goes to the page of the actual offer.

Re: Making the URL bar useful again: Where the Breadcrumb should have been all along

#52

Post by nanairo »

Yaggo wrote: post #46

> "Before I go on, it's worth mentioning that many websites are already moving towards practically URL-free navigation in the form of Java- and Flash-based input and navigation." That's simply bad design. I would say opposite – the trend is towards friendly URLs. And seriously, I don't remember seeing Java-based (applet) navigations since 1999. While I love the URLs in string form, I agree that they could have less c…

What was the historical reason? I know that originally the actual domain name was written from "largest" to "smallest": com.google, for example.

I find my perfectionist side slightly annoyed by the current form, but then if we ever change it we should move to year-month-day too, and putting the currency symbol after the number, and use decimals everywhere (no more hours but centi-days ^_^)... oh well, I guess the world is nice because it's imperfect. :)

Re: Making the URL bar useful again: Where the Breadcrumb should have been all along

#53

Post by nanairo »

djacobs wrote: post #40

Yesterday, I wanted to show a friend a video and typed http://hulu.com/top-chef , and the show's page came up. This seemed natural and efficient to me, but my friend could not get over this "magic". REST FTW.

he he... I do that often for Wikipedia... even though I don't get why Wikipedia hasn't implemented a nicer looking URL (in particular removing the middle /wiki/). :(

Re: Making the URL bar useful again: Where the Breadcrumb should have been all along

#54

Post by nanairo »

neilk wrote: post #17

This is a well-intentioned but terrible idea. This idea fails even on its own, since it presumes that URLs have structure, even within a particular site. So if you want to add a new page, even a one-off for a special occasion, then you have to start thinking about where it fits in your ad hoc URL/navigation scheme, too. Also, if you want to redesign navigation, you have to change all your URLs. URLs are brilliant bec…

Personally I think we shouldn't move away from the concept of: URI resource, just for some short-term gain. I think that metaphor will be a lot more useful in the long term.

What we may do, and to be honest it's starting to happen already, is to get rid of the address bar as an always-visible user interface feature. It could just be an overlaid window for those times when you actually want to type in the url (or if you jus want to check its value) that disappear once one click enter. And to be honest this is already happening in mobile phones where space is limited.

The breadcrumb idea, especially if as customisable as the author suggest, should be done in the site... which we already can do.

Re: Making the URL bar useful again: Where the Breadcrumb should have been all along

#55

Post by brc »

The Url bar never stopped being useful to me.

The problem is with bad Urls, not the idea or execution. The trend towards friendly urls is getting stronger, as is the trend away from flash sites and other fat and crummy navigation tools.

The Url is the foundation of the hyperlink, and the hyperlink is the innovation that glues the entire WWW together.

Re: Making the URL bar useful again: Where the Breadcrumb should have been all along

#56

Post by xyzzyz »

bruceboughton wrote: post #50
Yaggo wrote: post #46

> "Before I go on, it's worth mentioning that many websites are already moving towards practically URL-free navigation in the form of Java- and Flash-based input and navigation." That's simply bad design. I would say opposite – the trend is towards friendly URLs. And seriously, I don't remember seeing Java-based (applet) navigations since 1999. While I love the URLs in string form, I agree that they could have less c…

Or google.com/path/to/resource which we already have...

We don't, actually. We have http://google.com/path/ . The URI scheme, the 'http:// part, that is, is actually meaningless and could be replaced with shorter and meaningful 'web:', which was, I believe, the main point of a poster you were replying to.

Re: Making the URL bar useful again: Where the Breadcrumb should have been all along

#57

Post by daleharvey »

xyzzyz wrote: post #56
bruceboughton wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or google.com/path/to/resource which we already have...

We don't, actually. We have http://google.com/path/ . The URI scheme, the ' http:// part, that is, is actually meaningless and could be replaced with shorter and meaningful 'web:', which was, I believe, the main point of a poster you were replying to.

I think the main point of the poster was about the ordering of the address, subdomains and paths screw up ordering because they arent linear, its like american dates.

some.sub.domain.com/and/a/path vs .com/domain/sub/some/and/a/path

Re: Making the URL bar useful again: Where the Breadcrumb should have been all along

#58

Post by brianto2010 »

neilk wrote: post #17

This is a well-intentioned but terrible idea. This idea fails even on its own, since it presumes that URLs have structure, even within a particular site. So if you want to add a new page, even a one-off for a special occasion, then you have to start thinking about where it fits in your ad hoc URL/navigation scheme, too. Also, if you want to redesign navigation, you have to change all your URLs. URLs are brilliant bec…

> "This idea fails even on its own, since it presumes that URLs have structure, even within a particular site."

Don't sites usually have regular URL structures. Or, at least, could be organized into regular structures? In Rails, we have routes that map to URLs, like

  /clothing/shirts/
  /electronics/cellphones/verison
  ///
which looks like the idea the author was aiming towards. It doesn't seem that unreasonable.

Re: Making the URL bar useful again: Where the Breadcrumb should have been all along

#59

Post by stuhacking »

redfloatplane wrote: post #9
dstein wrote: post #4

I would just eliminate the URL bar and the back button entirely. These concepts are relics from the Internet 1.0 age and no longer have the correct meaning. Some sort of bookmark/search/wiki replacement navigation system needs to be developed.

(this comment is aimed at you, but it's sort of pertinent to the article also) You simply can't rip out a UI convention like that. Think about how many browsers there are. Virtually all of them use the back button and an URL bar. Say you made a browser without those, with an innovative new navigation system. Think it'll catch on? Extremely unlikely. When you take out one of the oldest conventions in the book, people…

It annoyed me that Apple removed the top tabs from Safari without providing a option. I still use it as my primary browser but on my MacBook I'd have liked to keep those extra pixels.

Re: Making the URL bar useful again: Where the Breadcrumb should have been all along

#60

Post by allwein »

korch wrote: post #44

I'll chime in with a rant about the URL bar because I've spent so much time thinking about how much I hate it. First, slapping a simple breadcrumb menu over the text URL bar wouldn't be so hard, so it's a worthwhile experiment, at least just to see it in action. I'm all for experimental software. Consider how much of the web already use sitemap.xml? It's not much further of a leap to adapt sitemaps into a better desc…

>Also, the URI bar is why we have so many users typing Facebook into Google search, going to the first result and then flooding whatever random forum with complaints about "the new Facebook", without realizing they weren't even logged onto Facebook's site. Most people don't know what a web page is, and they lack the conceptual model of linked documents, not to mention they will never know about DNS or Internet protocols.

I'm at a loss then. If you're recommending getting rid of the address bar, exactly how are users supposed to navigate anywhere? If your solution is Google or the search bar, that doesn't solve your given example of users searching and missing facebook. I fail to see how removing the address bar will make users better searchers.

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