Chrome May Drop the URL Bar 343
An anonymous reader writes "There isn't much Google can still eliminate from the browser's interface. Yet Google appears to be considering a drastic step to free up space in the UI: It may simply kill the URL bar. Instead of showing the URL bar all the time, it may be hidden within tabs. There are some other features coming as well. For example, Google will allow users to be logged into different Google accounts at the same time, as long as you use those accounts in different windows."
Who needs the URL bar? (Score:5, Informative)
Let Google be your portal to the entire Internet! Sheesh.
Re:Who needs the URL bar? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I bet phishers will love this feature...
Well, google probably fares much better for most people than typing the URL directly. There's a reason why scammers register typoed URLs.
Then there are of course a lot of people who already use google to type any web addresses, not realizing there's even such a thing as URL bar.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Chrome validates sites for you, and i guess the assumption must be that it is better than the average user at it. That is probably true when you consider that phishing only works because people don't understand URLs.
Re:Who needs the URL bar? (Score:5, Insightful)
You wouldn't believe how many people actually browse that way. I have seen my fair share of people that type URLs in the searchfield of their google homepage.
Re:Who needs the URL bar? (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to think it was odd, seeing my supervisor do that at work, when I suggested a site to him which might not necessarily be work related. Some great time later, I realized why he did it that way-- If you type the URL into Google, it doesn't show up in the URL bar's history. This was before private browsing and that sort of thing started showing up, and while he wasn't too concerned about what someone might find if they pulled up the browser history, he didn't necessarily want everywhere he's recently gone to appear if someone just happened to sit down at his desk to use the web.
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The danger is not really someone sitting down at his desk to use the web. The danger is giving a presentation to 100+ people on a screen the size of a barn door and then have something embarrassing (like ..uuuu..aaahhhh.. slashdot! Yes! slashdot for example!) hows up in the URL history.
Of course *cough* that never happened to me *cough* ;-P
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That's why all browsers now have the 'porn' mode.
Re:Who needs the URL bar? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Who needs the URL bar? (Score:5, Interesting)
You wouldn't believe how many people actually browse that way. I have seen my fair share of people that type URLs in the searchfield of their google homepage.
I do. Google spellchecks the URL for me so I don't accidentally get typo-phished. Most times Google will even warn me if the site I'm about to go to may harm my system... Think of this as a manual phishing filter that takes 0% additional resources when not in use, and no effort to disable / re-enable (In FF anyhow: left entry = manual URL; right entry = Search box / URL sanitiser)
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Really Stupid Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Really Stupid Idea (Score:5, Funny)
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No matter how many times I see something like that, it never ceases to blow my mind. Kind of reminds me of the time I got called in to remove over 6 thousand bits of malware from a friend's computer. Literally 98% of the processing time was being used by malware.
Re:Really Stupid Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you RTFA? Stacking the tabs at the side is one of the layouts, and the "Address bar hidden in tab" Compact layout is one of four.
Actually I like the idea a lot, it's especially annoying on smaller resolution screens to lose space to something we hardly ever type or read. Sure, it helps people who know what they're looking for against phishing, but such people are unlikely to click on random emails anyhow.
Chrome has been doing a good job pushing browsers forwards, after years of bloat and slowdown, and I'm looking forward to what comes out of this.
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Which also hides the tabs, essentially crippling the browser. Yeah, no, we do need something better than that, really.
Re:Really Stupid Idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Really Stupid Idea (Score:4, Informative)
While I wholeheartedly agree that this is incredibly stupid, I have to wonder where all the ranting about this was a year ago when it was posted. [chromium.org]
(This [google.com] is how old these mockups are.)
Okay, I like my screen real estate... (Score:5, Interesting)
...but that's going a little overboard. The one thing that you really shouldn't ever try to shuffle away on a browser is the URL bar.
I don't think that's something I could ever get used to.
Re:Okay, I like my screen real estate... (Score:4, Interesting)
AOL tried hiding addresses with their keywords and look how dumb their user base got. I still see idiot AOL users who have no freaking clue what a URL is.
Re:Okay, I like my screen real estate... (Score:5, Insightful)
Eh, nowadays people just type what they want in the Google Search bar, remember the Facebook login debacle [uxmag.com]?
On the other hand, URLs are going back to the AOL keyword origins anyway, look at this domains: http://nyti.ms/ [nyti.ms], http://flic.kr/ [flic.kr], http://youtu.be/ [youtu.be] . Yes, they're real. And yes, I hate them.
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Just wait until ICANN starts rolling out the custom TLDs, it's going to be an anti-phishing nightmare. Did you want p.aypal, pa.ypal, pay.pal, payp.al or paypa.l?
Re:Okay, I like my screen real estate... (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's probably the reason Google thinks it's a great idea. If you just search instead of using the URL bar, you're feeding their core business.
Hell, I can imagine them going through all the trouble of maintaining the Chrome browser *just for that*. Nobody should use the URL bar again! In 10 years nobody will even remember what it was.
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To add to your point, I can tell half the people I know, over the phone, to type in "www.whatever.com" in their address bar, and they don't get it.
No, the address bar, NO, THE ADDRESS BAR. THE TOP BAR. TOP!!! TOP!!! They don't fucking get it, and still say they need to go to google or yahoo to type in an address. My brother (who has a technical job, stringing network and cable tv cabling for the govt. for 20 years) kept telling me my domain didn't work. He was going to google and didn't see it in the
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"Do you call directory assistance if you know the number? Then why do you google when I'm telling you the address?"
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Sadly this isn't limited to AOL users. I work as tech support in Finland and I see this daily. Come to think of it, I know what part of UI needs to be dropped - the search bar. That way people would MAYBE eventually learn to type URLs into the address bar and actually go to Google to enter search queries. Alas, this will never happen, because Firefox gets money from Google for people using their search. Ditto for Chrome.
mod up, must read FUNNY! (Score:2)
LOL! And for me these are people who didn't even have computers when AOL was out, but I guess the walmart specials come pre-loaded with crap start pages that are like AOL. And so you TEACH them what the effin addy bar is, even what URL stands for and how they can oooooh type in an IP number instead of domain name, and "they get it!"... but a week later they're STILL typing a URL into an "Ask toolbar" which came "for free".
Start pages should be BANNED.
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.......so let them type the address into google and click on the first result. Seriously, is that so hard? Not everyone understands computers -- and many (perhaps the vast bulk, although generally I rarely overestimate the intelligence of any group of people) of them don't understand computers not because they're dumb but because, honestly, they give less than the slightest hint of a shit.
If they get to www.whatever.com by going to Google or Yahoo or Bing and typing it into the search engine, what matter to
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Probably it is good (in contrast to evil) to have a dumb userbase if you are an advertising company.
CC.
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AOL tried hiding addresses with their keywords and look how dumb their user base got. I still see idiot AOL users who have no freaking clue what a URL is.
You make a good point, but don't think for a second the infamous browser search box hasn't made people idiots too. Far too often when I tell someone a company name, rather than simply adding ".com" to the end of it, they lazily type in the company name into a Google search and let Google do the rest of the work.
...which of course leads to copious amounts of spamvertising from the first 20 (paid) hits on Google...one of them MIGHT actually be the company you're looking for...if you're lucky.
Search boxes. T
from someone who'd prefer status bar over url bar (Score:2)
I have really gotten used to the way the status bar appears/disappears ON the website page; I didn't think I'd ever trust a browser that didn't have a static status bar to let me know exactly what was going on all the time, but the Chrome status bar is a winner imo.
I'm thinking the auto-show URL bar could work, esp if they incorporate it as a ghost image on the webpage like they do the status bar. (And if they completely FUBAR the thing, I imagine it wouldn't take long to get an extension that brings back
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Nah,
You can't get too much real estate. Firefox got rid of the status bar - good on them - but that's the tip of the iceberg. Once we've figured out a way to get rid of tabs and navbar, we can start to look at getting rid of the window title. After that, I believe Firefox and Chrome need to start working on getting the real estate larger than the actual monitor. I'm sure it can be done somehow. But it's not goo enough until I can read the whole of War And Peace on one line, damnit!
Lets go phishing! (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like a GREAT way to make phishing attempts easier
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Re:Lets go phishing! (Score:4, Informative)
Indeed. Years ago the address bar was even re-introducted on popup windows to make it harder for badguys. I hate that it takes the space, but it is neccesary to protect users. TFA suggests it'll be optional to hide the address bar, I think it's just foolish.
...not so bad of an idea... (Score:3)
Of course I would prefer this be optional and would expect that if I were to hover over a page element I would still get the file name and/or location/url etc.
Though as someone else mentioned I'm a huge fan of Opera because I can make all of this happen already if I want to....and I think that's why it's roughly only me and that guy using Opera.
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I'm already annoyed at how hard it is to get at the menus in Chrome. This is just ridiculous. My screen is 1024x768.
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I've thought about it...and at first I thought it was really dumb and going too far. However, upon further consideration I would certainly enjoy the smidge of screen real estate it would afford me.
Learn to hit F11 and leave the STUPID ideas out of my browser.
Thanks.
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F11.
On my netbook (small screen, etc.) I just browse in full screen mode most of the time. Mousing to the top edge of the screen brings my tabs and navigation bar into view, pressing F11 instantly brings me back to familiarity.
Obviously not an option if you have an ultra-large widescreen and use everything in windowed mode so you can make good use of your space. But then I don't see the handful of pixels taken up by the URL bar being in THAT much demand if you've got a screen like that.
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Safari on iPad has the URL bar goes away when not in use.
The only reason to have the URL off by default is to prevent the user from 'hacking' it. The downside is that it is more difficult to check on phishing attacks. Exposing people to hacking may be something Google is willing to do to force more traffic.
Ummmm, no (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry but I don't like searching for every single thing when I already know the address. This is just dumb. Far too much emphasis place on searching these days. I rarely need to search anymore as I've been online long enough to basically know where most of the important stuff is.
Just an attempt to generate hits for google here. I dumped Chrome for Firefox the other day for reasons like this. Google controls enough, it's time to take them down a notch. They make some cool stuff but I'm not willing to tie so much into one company.
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While I agree that going through a search engine for everything is silly, I do know a couple people who already do exactly that. They never save bookmarks, because it's "easier" to make Google their home page.
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They are not talking about removing URL bar, but rather about hiding it when you are reading the page. It would still be accessible.
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Or less cynically, an attempt to make Chromium support smaller/more compact displays such as on netbooks where users are less likely to accrue lots of tabs anyway. Combining the navigation buttons and tab list seems like a good way to save a bit of vertical screen space.
I assume there will be a way to bring up a URL entry box in that mode (F6/Ctrl-L).
Recent versions of Chrome hide the scheme from the URI (tech.slashdot.org/story/... rather than http://.../ [...] which makes it easier to see the domain name of the
Re:Ummmm, no (Score:5, Funny)
)
Sorry.
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Don't ever do that again.
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)
There, I got your other one for you.
Great Idea (Score:5, Funny)
We at the National Phishing Association greatly support this suggestion.
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So what's the winning catch?
A) Pike
B) Carp
C) Nigerian Scammer, pretending to be the ex-wife of a deceased multi-billionaire -- complete with news story.
D) All of the above.
shooting fish in a barrel, again (Score:2)
it be hidden within tabs
Well, me think that be bad idea.
Just hit F11 (Score:2)
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Minimalism taken too far (Score:5, Interesting)
I understand the drive to minimize the UI in popular applications, but there's a point where it is taken too far. When widgets with intuitive functions start to have extra, magic functionality added on in order to get rid of other widgets, that raises a yellow flag with me. A tab, I get. A text box, I get. A combo tab and text box, hmm, I could get used to it, I guess. But taken too far, I can see UI's being without any chrome at all, and interacting with it becomes a mysterious combination of gestures, control keys, and hovering over the right places. I'm not a fan of that.
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Ah this is just paving the way for the next version of chrome - no browser at all! Just sit there and use your imagination.
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When widgets with intuitive functions start to have extra, magic functionality added on in order to get rid of other widgets, that raises a yellow flag with me.
I think you mean 'that adds a tiny black right-pointing arrow to the yellow flag and makes it bounce three times, shade its translucency by two points and extend its drop shadow by 45 degrees. But only if you hover over it for more than three seconds with the Alt key depressed'
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This is an excellent point. I love Chrome but the UI has me scatching my head sometimes. One some of my computers there is no bookmarks bar and on others there. To make things worse one of my Chrome installs keeps displaying "For quick access, place your bookmarks here or Import' text. Not sure if that will ever go away. Worse, if I click on "other bookmarks" which really should just be "bookmarks" there is no place to add bookmarks, instead I need to click on the star in the URL box. That's not intuitive
Mozilla already experimenting on this (Score:5, Informative)
Mozilla already has a Labs project that goes even further by hiding ALL the UI and showing it only on demand. It's called Home Dash [mozillalabs.com].
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They already removed too much (Score:2)
Their short status bar which hides long links already annoys me enough not to use their browser.
No options. (Score:3)
Between the lack of customizable options, and my paranoia about Google's privacy policies, I have just totally avoided trying to get used to Chrome.
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Look, if Google wants to keep their m
It'll be interesting to see (Score:2)
Phishbait (Score:3)
This is going to make phishing fraud worse, when people don't realize they aren't on the website they think they are.
I have seen this before (Score:2)
As it is supposed to be (Score:2, Interesting)
Finally after all these years the browser is feature complete!
URLs were never meant to be part of the user interface. They were always meant to be hidden. Look at them. Do you really think they were designed to be typed by humans? For further proof, read the historical notes from the w3c archives.
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Yes, they were designed to be typed by humans. That's why we have DNS, otherwise we would just use the friggin numbers.
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I don't disagree that URLs are intended to be human-entry friendly (though probably more due to phishing which was probably not anticipated), but DNS allows more than just humans reading and typing the right thing.
For example, an application can dictate server by DNS and the application provider can renumber due to provider change or whatever without disrupting connectivity.
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URLs were never meant to be part of the user interface. They were always meant to be hidden.
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I hear they're removing keyboards from the CR-48 t (Score:2)
I hear they're removing keyboards from the CR-48 too and replacing it with a giant wheel.
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Obligatory video from The Onion: Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard [youtube.com].
lynx? (Score:4, Interesting)
So basically google is making a version of lynx that will show pictures and text formatting? Oh, wait, even lynx has a basic interface that makes it, what's that word...useful. That's it. Chrome is already too minimal for my tastes. It's ok to have a few buttons up there. Honest.
What's funny is that we're seeing a reverse in computing ability. I remember back when a 14" monitor was standard. When we got those 17" crts(15.75" viewable) we marveled at the screen real estate. Now at work we have either dual 19" or dual 21" monitors. But the trend actually seems to be towards smaller screens. At our school, 99% of the students have laptops or netbooks with the same physical screen size as the crt monitors we trashed almost a decade ago. If you asked us in 2001 if we'd give up a 22" widescreen for a 14" or even 10" screen we'd have laughed you out of the building.
Just give in and make a tablet/netbook version of chrome and a full featured, full interface version for desktops and laptops.
Just stop it already (Score:2, Insightful)
Mozilla and Google both seem to be on a crusade to completely fuck up their browsers and make them as shitty and useless as possible. I just don't get their mindset of constantly changing things, removing things, adding things, not to make them better, but to simply make them different. It makes sense for commercial products, whether it's Windows, automobiles or toothpaste, where you have to constantly get people to buy the latest version of your product in order to maintain your revenue stream. But for
Fallacy of software changes.. (Score:2)
I would say it makes no *rational* sense for anything to change merely for the sake of changing even if it is commercial sofrtware.
There is a perception issue that if you have no plans to fiddle with software in a user-visible way then your project is stagnant and being 'abandoned'. You are never allowed to think you got it right (admittedly getting it 'right' is rare and highly subjective).
Chrome vs Firefox (Score:2)
Is it just me or are Google and Mozilla having a contest to see who can take their nice shiny browser and make the worst stinking piece of foul excrement possible in as few releases as possible? It's a fight to the bottom, i swear!
Ponies?! (Score:2)
If you look at the diagram in TFA, you'll see that the "URL tab" reads, google.com/ponies.
As a Slashdot reader, I therefore cannot take this article seriously.
Welcome to (Score:3)
one step further towards media consumption only (Score:3)
Anyone else find this disturbing, while I know there is a push to merge the web with one way media consumption like radio and tv but this is a bit much IMHO. No it wont hurt those that know better and have some tech savvy but for the masses its basically going to cause people to be led around the internet by the nose. I really dont want to see the internet become a corporate main street while the rest of things get relegated to red light districts and dark alleyways.
Maybe I need a foil hat but it just seems like ideas like the push to get a convergence device is more a push to get rid of the riff-raff (aka indie, amateur and non commercial) content on the internet, its as if the major media groups have recognized they are loosing control of their particular money trains and there is collusion between conglomerates of the past and the conglomerates of today to reduce the risk of the web allowing an equal presence.
An arbitrary URL does not make you independent (Score:3)
Did you actually type "http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/02/20/1817259/Chrome-May-Drop-the-URL-Bar" to get to this page?
Or, did you type "slashdot.org" and follow links? Or click on a bookmark?
URLs are technical information. The advantage of human-readable URLs over IP addresses has faded considerably -- they're only nominally "human readable" once you get past the top level page.
Does it bother you that most workstations don't display their MAC addresses?
This is why I can't stand Chrome (Score:2)
I will admit I haven't spent a lot of time with it, but then I figure if I can't get things working in a fashion I want in a few minutes with little to no hunting, then it isn't for me anyway. I already hate that by default I cannot find the fucking bookmarks on Chrome. Sorry, but I like how it's set up in Firefox, which is how it was on Mozilla, which is how it was on Netscape. I'm used to it, and I *like* it that way. Stop trying to force me to use some other retarded way (/me looks at MSO "Ribbon").
Now I
Follow the money (Score:2)
Solution in need of a Problem? (Score:2)
This already exists in Chrome / FF / IE: press F11 (Score:2)
Make the full page view as default in the browser, and only show the url bar when the user creates a new tab or when the mouse pointer is at the top of the page
Just make it optional, you bastards! (Score:5, Interesting)
Next step (Score:3)
Eliminate the entire window. The browser will run orders of magnitude faster, decrease its memory footprint drastically, and take up absolutely no screen space at all.
Sounds good... netbook vertical res is too low. (Score:3)
This sounds good to me, as long as at least part of the URL is visible. There's really no need for the address bar to go all the way across the screen.
This is especially good on netbooks since the vertical resolution is annoyingly low. Though, I recently realized that fullscreen mode in any browser is useful to get that extra bit of vertical screen space - that makes a big difference on some sites!
The end of the universal UI (Score:3)
What we see here is an attempt to maximise screen real estate. This is necessary on today's widescreen laptops and netbooks, but pointless for those who have a large monitor.
For this reason, the UI should be user-configurable.
Seems like Opera keeps marking the beat (Score:3)
Opera 11 does something similar - the URL bar shows, by default, only the main part of the URL and HTTPS statuses with color cues. As soon as you click on it the URL expands fully.
It's really unobtrusive and works great. This is one of my favorite perks of Opera 11, among with tab stacking.
Sidetab (Score:3)
Let's take the article. Roughly 75% of my screen real estate is wasted. About 5% of those 75% is by the browser controls and the rest is white space because I like the majority of people out there have a widescreen monitor. They're not especially well-suited to text (unless you place a bunch of documents next to each other) with either
So why are browsers locked in a fight towards absurd minimalism when there's huge amounts of space to go around. And with more and more screens going for 16:9 instead of 16:10 it's getting worse, not better.
Ignore the blog spam. Article is probably wrong. (Score:3)
Re:first (Score:5, Funny)
Also, even with a FP, you could at least say something just as inane but a little more on topic, like:
Instead of showing the URL bar all the time, it be hidden within tabs.
"It be hidden? What do we pay the editors for? It is hidden, or it would be hidden or something. Come on, don't we have anyone here who hasn't outsourced their job to Elbonia?"
But thanks for trying. It was a half-assed job that I wouldn't be proud of, but if that's all you have, then frame it and show it to your mother every time she comes into the basement to refill your Cheetos.
Re:first (Score:4, Funny)
Re:first (Score:5, Funny)
Instead of showing the URL bar all the time, it be hidden within tabs.
Arrr! There be nothing wrong with this style of writing, matey!
Can't you tell pirate-talk when you see it? (Score:2)
Come on, don't we have anyone here who hasn't outsourced their job to Elbonia?"
He's obviously an ex-pirate from Somalia, you insensitive clod.
I for one find it commendable that he gave up such a profitable yer risky profession of robbing people at RPG-point, to become a Slashdot editor.
I say we welcome him with open ar... Oh, wait... my bad. It's samzenpus. Nah... he doesn't outsource to Elbonia.
That's his high-quality work actually. Or low-effort work... depending how you look at it.
At least this time he didn't present "Google May Kill Chrome URL Bar" as "Google Executives Caught Whi
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I for one find it commendable that he gave up such a profitable yer risky profession of robbing people at RPG-point, to become a Slashdot editor.
</quote>
So what RPG do you intend to use? If it's D&D you could crush them under tons of editions and sourcebooks. Though something like Dragon Age from Green Ronin would be considered more 'cutting edge'.
(To those that don't get the joke, I'm playing off the use of undefined TLAs.) (Just like TLA.)
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Telling them to look at the URL bar for https was just wrong, imho. You should have been telling them to look at the status bar padlock.
On the topic of determining phishing urls.... use the status bar before (pre) you click a link, don't use the url bar after (post) you've clicked the phishing link. O.o
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F11 kids, use it!