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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

#651

Post by masswerk »

trocadero wrote: post #173
parliament32 wrote: post #118

Considering a subdomain "trivial" is ridiculous... there's a difference between "www.example.com" and "example.com". Not only can they serve different sites, they can even have different DNS records! It seems that "m." is also considered a trivial subdomain. So when a user clicks a link to a "m.facebook.com" uri, they'll be confused why FB looks different when the browser reports it's on "facebook.com". I sincerely h…

>there's a difference between "www.example.com" and "example.com" Can you link to a site where these two are different?

A) Consider any sharing platforms where unrelated bodies coexist with distinct subdomains under a common root domain (e.g., Blogspot, Tumbler, etc) While "www" is probably a reserved name and mostly not of practical concern, "m" may be a practical issue.

B) Consider subdomains for test-purpose like "www.test.www.example.com" (now displayed as "test.example.com", which is actually not even the root of the specific subdomain).

C) Users unsure, if they are on the full-featured or a reduced mobile site, when "m" is hidden.

D) I may actually want to have a service agnostic default host at the root and subdomains for dedicated servers (like "www", "ftp", "mail", "stun", "voip", etc). Maybe this one just returns a short text message by design, if accessed on port 80. Not every domain is just about the WWW. (Edit: While we may assume that such a server would forward in practice, this may be assuming too much.)

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

#652

Post by jake_the_third »

justadudeama wrote: post #512
jake_the_third wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, users expect to type what they see in the address bar, and get the same result every time. Can we even call them address bars anymore? And blaming website owners for working within the bounds of published standards is ridiculous and you know it.

If I asked any non-technical person under the age of 20 the difference between www.google.com and google.com they probably couldn't tell me. Users expect www.example.com to equal example.com. If a website isn't redirecting one to the other, they, are doing something that is incredibly anti-user and it is a good thing that google/apple are forcing them to do it different.

This is not about users knowing the difference between www and no www on a site that redirects one to the other, but about users who don't know the difference on a site that doesn't. See my comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17930243 for an illustration of one of the issues that may occur.

> Users expect www.example.com to equal example.com.

No, they don't. The expect that the address they write down works when they type it back in the address bar though.

> If a website isn't redirecting one to the other, they, are doing something that is incredibly anti-user and it is a good thing that google/apple are forcing them to do it different.

You keep claiming this with any sort of evidence or backing. This may be anecdotal, but I worked as tech support for a large org (300+ users) most of my career and have dealt with most types of users. I've only seen them interact with the address bar in one of two ways: explorer shortcuts on the desktop/browser bookmarks (few) or stick-it notes on the monitor or keyboard (many). I'd be willing to bet my next paycheck that not 5% of them are aware that google redirects to www.

At least for those users, none of them will benefit from chrome's mishandling of www. Many of them will suffer from it. I'd be willing to stand corrected with a proper study though.

Also, subdomains aren't only used to make http urls pretty, they are intended to be used to refer to actual physical hardware hosts that belong to a given domain. All published standards I know of are written with this in mind. None of them mandate that www be synonymous to the parent domain, not even those responsible for web technologies. Organizations that follow standards are not at fault for following standards.

If having two different hosts on www and the parent domain was truly "incredibly anti-user" (a dubious claim), let google introduce a rfc at relevant standards bodies and have it go through proper scrutiny first.

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

#653

Post by qu4z-2 »

abalone wrote: post #506
feross wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

FWIW the Chromium agrees that 2 and 3 are bugs and will fix them.[1] 1 is by design though. Remember that they are only partially hidden; when you focus on the address bar it reveals the true address. [1] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=881410...

My understanding is that it's not when you focus it but when you attempt to edit it, either via double clicking or by moving the cursor.

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

#654

Post by vanadium »

Donzo wrote: post #389
masswerk wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is certainly subverting the domain name system. I can't see the value or gain in security by this. (If you want to put focus on the domain, then display the host-part with less contrast, i.e. grey, but don't hide any potentially vital information. Otherwise, put out a RFC, defining "www" as a substitute for "*", or a zero-value atom, in order to guarantee consistent behavior.) Edit: There are also legal concerns…

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…

Referencing the AMP URL controversy seems somewhat relevant in this context.

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

#655

Post by jake_the_third »

inetknght wrote: post #628
justadudeama wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If in most uses minds, "www.example.com" is the same as "example.com", then "example.com" is less confusing because they have probably never heard of the word "subdomain".

Have "most users" been measured? Perhaps they should be taught. Otherwise let's move on to making nuclear reactors less confusing.

My admittedly anecdotal evidence suggest that they do not. From my other comment: I worked as tech support for a large org (300+ users) most of my career and have dealt with most types of users. I've only seen them interact with the address bar in one of two ways: explorer shortcuts on the desktop/browser bookmarks (few) or stick-it notes on the monitor or keyboard (many).

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

#656

Post by kojeovo »

brockers wrote: post #269
fireattack wrote: post #99

I'm ok with hiding "www.", but it also hides "m." which is sometimes very confusing (I once opened a m.facebook.com link and was very puzzled why it uses the mobile site when the URl bar just shows "facebook.com").

No this is simply bad implementation. As has already been mention, for internet services that also have websites for those services the www. subdomain makes total sense. > How will you distinguish http://www.pool.ntp.org vs http://pool.ntp.org ? In the above case pool.ntp.org is a decades old time service, while www.pool.ntp.org is a website describing the service.

http://www.pool.ntp.org redirects to https://www.ntppool.org/en/ as does https://ntppool.org/en/, so I guess that's a non issue

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

#658

Post by ryenus »

The issue has only 46 comments at this moment because they have restricted the permission to comment, very nice. I thought there would be hundreds of, otherwise.

BTW, it sucks that existing comments cannot be voted or reacted with emojis, they should know this: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/monorail/issues/detail?id=4248

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

#659

Post by Exuma »

rhizome wrote: post #334
NathanCH wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The UX of moving what I'm looking at instantly under click is very unpleasant too, Could you expand on this? What are you referring to?

I don't know if it's the same thing, but I'll bite: it's absolutely maddening to edit or select part of a URL. Click in the address bar and the entire address is selected, then you click on any part of it to either select a part or to place your cursor in order to add to it, after which Chrome appears to first shift the entire URL to the right in order to show the protocol, then it places the cursor within the shifte…

chrome://flags/#omnibox-ui-hide-steady-state-url-scheme-and-subdomains

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

#660

Post by amygdyl »

kba wrote: post #579
masswerk wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We might even call it "favicon", for the fun of it… :-)

Any fake-Facebook website can copy Facebook's favicon, so that wouldn't add any security at all. An identicon is a hash value represented as an icon. "facebook.com", for instance, may hash to a red image with a yellow line through it. While you wouldn't remember the icon initially, over time you would – or at least your subconsious would. If you ever visisted a fake-Facebook, you'd immediately notice that something w…

deliver the Favicon from a USPTO server, and I think you should nail the most amazing proportion of fraudsters, overnight.
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