Could Google's Test of Hiding Complete URLs In Chrome Become a Standard? 327
MojoKid (1002251) writes "The address bar in a Web browser has been a standard feature for as long as Web browsers have been around — and that's not going to be changing. What could be, though, is exactly what sort of information is displayed in them. In December, Google began rolling-out a limited test of a feature in Chrome called "Origin Chip", a UI element situated to the left of the address bar. What this "chip" does is show the name of the website you're currently on, while also showing the base URL. To the right, the actual address bar shows nothing, except a prompt to "Search Google or type URL". With this implementation, a descriptive URL would not be seen in the URL bar. Instead, only the root domain would be seen, but to the left of the actual address bar. This effectively means that no matter which page you're on in a given website, all you'll ever see when looking at the address bar is the base URL in the origin chip. What helps here is that the URL is never going to be completely hidden. You'll still be able to hit Ctrl + L to select it, and hopefully be able to click on the origin chip in order to reveal the entire URL. Google could never get rid of the URL entirely, because it's required in order to link someone to a direct location, obviously."
And the question of the day is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? It's easier, more informative, more transparent, and arguably better just to show a plain old URL field than add some extra layer of crap to 'hide' it and make it less useful...
Re:And the question of the day is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, and when you click the field to give it focus have it highlight the whole thing so that you can start typing your search or Ctrl+C or Ctrl+V to copy or paste the damn link. I've been compiling my own Firefox for so long I had forgotten that this wasn't a standard feature. Sure beats triple clicking the URL to select it.
Re:And the question of the day is... (Score:5, Informative)
If the URL is automatically highlighted that makes it even more easy to lose the content of your middle click paste buffer.
I've just seen Alt-D / Ctrl-L does that. Bummer. Best is to have a little button to clear the URL bar if that's what you want to do, I had a Firefox extension provide it and it's one of the few features included in dillo.
Or you can click at the end of the URL, press shift-home to select it all, press delete, type stuff. It still hijacks the middle mouse buffer. So the single clicking and using arrows and delete/backspace is needed as the only method that will preserve it, and that's sometimes useful if you wanted to paste the second half of a URL, after the domain name.
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I was thinking the same thing. I was also thinking that if Firefox implemented that, they'd either put the button at the wrong end of the bar or somewhere in the lower right corner, Fitts' law be damned.
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If the URL is automatically highlighted that makes it even more easy to lose the content of your middle click paste buffer.
God, I hate the "double clipboard buffer" thing in Linux systems. That really *IS* something that could do with some UX improvement. And as for auto-copying anything that is selected, I have little sympathy for users that suffer because of that behaviour - it's braindead. Use ctrl-c or whatever. Copying is a separate command from selecting, and no interface should merge the two.
Re:And the question of the day is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And the question of the day is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Put the domain in solid black, and everything else in a light gray.
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Safari 7 already does this.
It helps the dumb users AND it doesn't punish the users who understand technology.
Google are slowly turning into the old version of Microsoft.
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Safari in iOS has had this feature for as long as I can remember.
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You mean that thing Chrome invented in 2008?
Re:And the question of the day is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Deliberately hiding details because they confuse people is not a solid reason for turning everything into its fisher price equivalent.
Re:And the question of the day is... (Score:5, Insightful)
If the target audience of your browser is a half step or less from computer illiterate, you need to take steps to protect them from themselves. This means that the others will have to find another toy to play with because google has decided that the more literate crowd is not as valuable as customers or feels that they will just adapt, complain and move along because they have little other choice.
Re:And the question of the day is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Targeting the lowest common denominator is what breeds the next generation of better idiots who can't even figure out your already dumbed down design. At some point, "this far, no farther" should rule the day.
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good point. terms like that get abused as they become pop terms, and then they lose their original meaning. I like 'greatest common divisor'
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I replied to GP, but he (and you) are wrong. Least common denominator is a totally valid term. It's even a pretty good analogy; better than either "greatest common divisor" or "least common multiplier" given its how to work with disparate quantities.
Re:And the question of the day is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And the question of the day is... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes they CAN. For example, by SEEING the actual URL redirects that Google uses to track everyone's moves(*), people might wake up and PROTEST, or worse, STOP using Google's spyware.
Hiding information breeds ignorance, and ignorance leads to exploitation. When companies want to hide information, it's usually for their own benefit. Google is no exception.
(*) don't believe me? Next time you're browsing the search results returned from Google, look at the source for the links. It LOOKS like you're clicking on a legitimate url, but in actual fact you're clicking on a Google spy link, that FIRST talks to google servers so they can track what you're doing, and THEN sends your browser to the place you thought you were going.
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what they need to do (and Chrome already does, before FF did) is this: http://bank-of-america./ [bank-of-america.] shadywebsite.ru/login.php
FTFY.
Re:And the question of the day is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit. You don't punish normally competent users for being normally competent and encourage illiterate morons to be illiterate morons. There is nothing about an URL that is the least bit confusing or hard to describe. "The part after the first colon and double slash, up to the next slash, is the site. The rest helps you find your place within the site." How hard is that? You would have to be at death's door from dehydration due to uncontrollable drooling not to grasp that.
Stop pretending people are stupider than they are, and stop encouraging them to be stupid. Just stop.
Re:And the question of the day is... (Score:5, Interesting)
ht tp://passwordreset.bankofamerica.com.0.34234.com/?=customerpasswordreset&34234
Now show that to your mother and ask her if this is the correct site to reset her bank of America password. Next try and explain to her why, and then come back and tell us how hard it is to grasp.
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If the target audience of your browser is a half step or less from computer illiterate, you need to take steps to protect them from themselves.
So if the target audience of Chrome is people who are barely computer-literate, why do they bother embedding advanced developer tools in there?
Re:And the question of the day is... (Score:4, Insightful)
http:/ [http]
We've got the protocol, which no one cares about (encryption status needs more information than just https), "tech" which means we're in the technology section (though no functional difference really), the site we're on "slashdot.org", "story" which is useless, a date which is useless (on the page), a story id, which no one cares about, and finally the title of the article, which is also useless (on the page and the window name).
All that information can be found on the web page we're looking at (except the story id). All that really matters is that this is slashdot.org, and even that isn't all that important.
With the rise of ajax, the address bar is becoming less and less needed. Half the time it has a bunch of session id info mixed in or other random ids. It's not something that the user is suppose to be looking at in most cases, the only real use is to when copying it to be able to get back to the same place.
Re:And the question of the day is... (Score:5, Interesting)
Granted, but having access still has utility.
1. having a reference url that can be shared by im, irc, game chat, socialmedia, etc with simple copy and paste is valuable. This is still quite valid and is reason enough for keeping it visible and accessible.
2. the ability to navigate bad websites when they fail (eg they break the back button purposely) but you really need the information they contain.
3. There are still sites out there that use static urls.. it's just that google and facebook don't, so everyone now assumes no one does.
4. Being able to see fishing urls for what they really are, though this is more useful as a cursor hover in the statusbar, which is another thing the web 2.0 generation is scrambling to get rid of.
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Most "bad" websites that break things you often can't use the address bar anyways since it's either not pointed to the right page, they have a weird file structure, or the page has changed it.
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There a trend to have the browser window not render the window's title bar. Firefox and Chrome do that by default at least on Windows, as well as MS Internet Explorer.
So a descriptive name in the URL can be a workaround for that. I do have a title bar that displays the full title, but my tab says "Coul...". I do think the descriptive URL is a good trend as well. It's better than "http://slashdot.org/0edc7435b234afbc23098cda148994e".
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No, the story name is not useless. What a pile of crap. It's how you know they are looking at the same story you are. Without that, you have zero chance of supporting or guiding the user over the phone - no matter if the user is of ordinary intelligence or a moron.
Sheesh.
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it could be easily solved by having a 'simple' and an 'expert' view paradigm.
if they want to have a simple minded audience, fine, define what things you want to drop or show differently and if the user selected 'simple', replay it that way.
if the user selected 'expert' or advanced or some other word like that, then they'd get the non-dumbed down version.
a lot of apps have this dual view kind of mode set. I don't see why this couldn't also be done, here.
Re:And the question of the day is... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is how things were already circa 1995-2001.. Then everyone got on this "make the web 'accessible'" mantra, so it's being dumbed down to 'hoodrat' level.
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But it's good business for Google to increase user reliance on searching.
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Of course. Get the post eternal september population to accept user-hostility as a default in software and networked devices, and watch the money roll in. It's really too bad.
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Clearly, you have patched your browser to only show IP numbers in URL instead of domain names.
Re:And the question of the day is... (Score:5, Funny)
Deliberately hiding details because they confuse people is not a solid reason for turning everything into its fisher price equivalent.
Hah. The other day a friend showed me his Android phone. The screen was black, in the middle there was this dumb looking LEGO robot lying on its back, something like this [blogspot.com]. "You're the computer whiz. What does this mean?" I looked at it for a moment, jabbed my finger repeatedly on the unresponsive little screen that has no buttons like a bird bumping against a window.
Then I said,
"It appears that clever engineers have managed to make a full color megapixel display that is capable of showing a whole chapter of text say absolutely NOTHING. The machine knows something is wrong, that's why it retrieved the image and is showing it. It knows what it was trying to do, what did not work as expected. There are details and helpful hints inside, but they decided that you wanted to see this dumb robot instead. These people are messing with your mind. They think you are stupid. They think you are easily confused and need to see a picture of a robot and a red triangle when something goes wrong. They don't trust you with details. They don't think you can handle the truth. And you know what? When you call them the person you speak to will probably not know any more than I do, they'll tell you to push some secret reset button and hope for the best. Well here's what you have to do. But does it show a diagram indicating where the reset button is? No, you're supposed to look at a dead robot carcass instead. Because you're nothing to them.
You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"
While I was saying all of this, the robot disappeared and the phone rebooted.
People don't ask me for computer help much any more.
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It did. It's also why the network is getting less secure, less peer friendly, and less functional while it focuses on people who do nothing but shop at strip malls.
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leading the ipv6 charge? I kind of doubt that. Linux and bsd had it long before apple did...since the 6BONE days at least.
Even if so, you're only looking at one action. Their business goal is to drive people to their app store. There's nothing peer to peer about that. Besides, ipv6 gives more address space to all those devices they want to sell as part of the 'internet of things'. that way they can monitor usage to monetize and adjust their level of user-hostility, and be able to hand data over to the
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The key detail is what is defined as 'relevant'.
Re:And the question of the day is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And the question of the day is... (Score:5, Insightful)
What ease of use? it provides them with no more knowledge and doesn't make a web page any easier to use, if they don't understand a URL they are already not typing it or touching it. Hiding it just ensures further ignorance for no benefit.
Hah. Like Microsoft deciding that file name dot-extensions were the devil's workshop and must be hidden from view by default. So people did not learn them, and became vulnerable to whole new classes of malware attack and needless confusion, especially when sharing files.
Whenever I set up a new Windows showing file extensions and showing full path in address bar was the first change I'd make. Turn on URL address bars (some OEMs turned them off!), status lines, full detail everything. And people learned how their folders were organized and how to recognize malevolent attachments because I'd tell them they should learn extensions and look out for weird names, only the last one counts. When they reinstalled Windows they'd call and say "Hey! Windows is screwed up, I'm not seeing the full file name." Now they were savvy enough I could tell them where to find those options over the phone. They demanded full disclosure, nothing less.
And thus, the great circle of nerd is complete.
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I doubt this is an issue for most people. They're used to long URLs, they've been around for decades now. Google is just arrogant. They make buggy software and they're constantly looking for ways to change things (gotta keep all those worker bees busy) and they end up making their software worse (like Google Maps). There are many reasons why I prefer Firefox over Chrome and this will be one more to add to my list. My only worry is Mozilla's latest "me too!!" push to make Firefox look like Chrome. God help m
Re:And the question of the day is... (Score:5, Insightful)
The benefit is ease of use for people who have no idea what a URL is. They just look up there and see, "yes, this is definitely my bank's website," instead of "holy shit what does long string of symbols that mean."
Maybe a basic part of web literacy is learning what a URL is and what it's useful for. "Whoa!" you say, "we need to do anything we can to make computers easier and more self-explanatory." Well, yes, I agree with that, but we're reaching a point where designers start to "overtrain" their design. Take this "origin chip", for example. You make it slightly easier to identify the site you're on and perhaps slightly less intimidating for a newbie [which is sort of ridiculous in this context because the web is do damn ubiquitous now], but you've also made a host of other tasks slightly harder (viz., copying/emailing a link, fixing a link, manually entering a link, inspecting a link, etc.). In addition, you're no longer subtly informing the intuitions of future authors, librarians, technicians, webmasters, programmers, and judges/juries as to the URL~=page association. That's ultimately making it harder for people to understand how their technology works.
Usability design is a noble endeavor, and I'm all on board with Norman, Tufte, etc. What I'm NOT on board is the current fad of software that drops functionality, removes technical visibility, and overhauls the interface with each release. That's just user-hostile.
[ranting because Google Camera dropped exposure control recently]
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Well said. Dumbing-down technology will likely have the same effect as dumbing-down education. Dumber people!
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Holy shit... what do all these signs on the road mean? I better just drive as fast as possible to get where I'm going and ignore all the intrinsic features of my method of travel.
Education is ALWAYS a better option that obfuscation.
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Nice car analogy. Before you get your drivers license you must demonstrate you know what those signs mean.
The sooner they start requiring people to pass a test before being let lose on the internet, the better.
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Re:And the question of the day is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Goddammit, Poe's Law!
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Too bad you're probably right. It explains why software is getting less useful and more user hostile. Those 'beautiful people' are suckers.
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This is all well and good until you have http://legit.example.com/viewurl.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmalicious.example.com
Magic act (Score:2)
While we ensure you will never go to Bob'sTinyDomain.com ever again.
The 1% [ucsc.edu]
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Why? It's easier, more informative, more transparent, and arguably better just to show a plain old URL field than add some extra layer of crap to 'hide' it and make it less useful...
Better for Google to keep people ignorant? To hide GOOG's butt ugly obfuscated urls and gloss over the fact that they track not only what you search for, but what you click on? Seems more than a little Microsoftish of Google.
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Worse, it's burying the most important/useful part of the URL, and displaying the I-already-knew-I-was-here part. I most often want to edit the end, or see the end, not caring about the domain and middle nearly as much.
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Yet another solution searching for a problem.
Re: And the question of the day is... (Score:2)
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Stops scammers using addresses like www.bankofamerica.com.secure.login.whatever...
What good does me seeing "/story/14/05/03/007209/could-googles-test-of-hiding-complete-urls-in-chrome-become-a-standard" in the address bar? I know what the story is, the title says it.
If I want to type a URL, I press Alt-D and start typing.
Nope. (Score:5, Insightful)
What, do they want Chrome to be the next AOL?
No. Show the URL. Start trimming that down and next thing you know we'll be back with keywords...
Well, we already are at keywords ... proof ... (Score:2)
2) On a phone, people tend to use a voice command to say what information they are looking for.
In the real olden days, people memorized phone "numbers" saying things like "Klondike" 5234 to an actual human phone exchange operator.
I think the actual digits and alphabet mapping actually came later (someone who knows, just jump in and correct!)
Hell, in the early days of the internet, half the sites seemed to be just pu
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this time around they are called #hashtags
Amateurs (Score:5, Funny)
Couldn't they just output the SHA-512 of the URL and be done with it?
Please try harder. (Score:5, Interesting)
There's obvious ways to shoot for the phishing mitigations that this is apparently seeking to achieve, without turning the web into an app store. We used to make fun of stupid flash sites due to lack of linkability, is it really necessary to so thoroughly lunge off the cliff into this idiocy now?
I wonder how many bad guys are already thinking of ways to exploit this. Yes the domain is more prominent, that should have been fixed years ago - but how many sites out there are completely free of XSS vulnerabilites? When this eventually becomes non-optional, how am I going to spot https://mybank.foo/?q="><script>evil; stuff;</script>
?
The perfect irony of course is that Google's own pagerank depends on cross-site linking... By robbing people of URLs, a future generation of net users will grow up never knowing how to share a page with their friends unless there's a sharing mechanism within the same site their friends already use.
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Bad guys can already do this right now, and the url still shows the bank's domain, so non-technically inclined users are no less protected.
Technically inclined users probably never navigated to the url in the first place.
Your specific example is a flaw in the specific website, and there is little Chrome can do when a website is coded in a insecure way that persists across all browsers (and web standards).
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The perfect irony of course is that Google's own pagerank depends on cross-site linking... By robbing people of URLs, a future generation of net users will grow up never knowing how to share a page with their friends unless there's a sharing mechanism within the same site their friends already use.
Who say's you need a sharing mechanism within the site? I'm sure Google will let you click and drag the "Origin Chip" into Google Hangouts (tm). The fact that that lets them track what you share is just gravy.
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There's obvious ways to shoot for the phishing mitigations that this is apparently seeking to achieve, without turning the web into an app store. We used to make fun of stupid flash sites due to lack of linkability, is it really necessary to so thoroughly lunge off the cliff into this idiocy now?
Except what they are proposing does not eliminate linkability, it just eliminates preying on users who don't realise how a URL is properly formed with a carefully crafted phishing scam. The URL often adds nothing of value to a site. Right now I don't give a crap about anything after or before the slashdot.org because all that information is already available on the site. As long as I can still link it with a simple copy and past (which I would be able to under the proposed change) what's the benefit of all
Done Already (Score:2)
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I hope not (Score:2)
I certainly hope not. The number of times I have to edit a URL in the address bar is rather high
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As always, balance is best (Score:2)
The hybrid approach where the domain is in 100% black while the protocol and trailing path is 50% black or so, is perfect. It enables you to mentally filter out the extra bits, but allows you to see those extra bits at a glance without requiring any further action.
Chrome, as usual, fucks everything up, and Firefox is sure to follow.
Please stop (Score:2, Troll)
I don't have anything coherent to say. I'm so disgusted with lemmings and fads running amok in this industry I am not going to bother stating the obvious.
This kind of asshattery certainly on par with Microsoft spending millions in meetings and committee design to perfect the most inane location to place shutdown/logoff buttons.
Keep up the good work.
Google's Ultimate Goal (Score:2)
Since their slogan was "don't be Evil" I always figured they'd end up as one of the most evil companies on the planet. That's just the way humanity is. Anything idealistic tends to get perverted. The more idealistic it is, the more perverse it tends to be. Hence, "don't be Evil" is likely to get about as perverse as it comes. This is only the beginning. The ultimate Google UI to be placed in the browser, your car, and just about anything else will be reduced to a single button marked "Submit".
Oh crap... I'm
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All part of the plan. (Score:5, Insightful)
Google could never get rid of the URL entirely, because it's required in order to link someone to a direct location, obviously.
Google doesn't want people to go to a website directly on their own. They want folks to search for it with Google, obviously.
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I already know many people who do just that.
Type "cbc.ca" in the address bar? Screw that, they type CBC in their Google home page, wait for the search, then click on the cbc.ca link that comes up. Bass ackwards way of using the 'net in my book, but it works for them.
Re:All part of the plan. (Score:4, Insightful)
A lot of browsers are to blame for this. Both Chrome and Firefox place a big search bar in the middle of the screen and put it in auto-focus as soon as the browser starts.
Firefox gets most of its funding that way (ironically from Google) and Google gets to harvest our searches in both cases.
It's a browser UI issue, not a user issue.
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Related to that is the difficulty of clearing the address bar.
If you click in the middle of the current URL the whole thing highlights (on Firefox anyway), replacing the current address contents with whatever you type in -- even if you don't hit backspace and clear it first.
How can it get easier than that?
AOL keywords (Score:2, Insightful)
All part of corporate strategy to turn the internet into television 2.0.
Must not happen.
PPC (Score:2)
If you run any kind of a website in a competitive market you can see the value (cash) that Google is extracting with this change.
Every time the user leaves your website to go to Google (even if they come right back) is a chance for you to lose that customer to a PPC competitor that is squatting our your trademark/URL with an ad that users will confuse as actually being part of your site.
Anyone with me on this?
obviously to promote search (Score:4, Interesting)
If you don't have the URL but you have the name of the site and what the page is about " an article on CNN about blah blah" , how would you find it? SEARCH! And perhaps you'd encounter a useful advertisement for blah blah on your way to CNN.
Nice move. No more links, only Google.
Firefox Looks Appeaking (Score:2)
Chrome keeps trying to sign me in to Google services, uses too much memory (as much or more than Firefox), its plugins aren't as established as FF's and they're starting to do strange things to the UI (like implement their own scroll bar).
Each have their pros and cons, Firefox allows you to change network setti
The gibberish URL is unimportant data (Score:2)
I support the idea. I do not know if Google's is the best way to do it, but especially at the era of most web pages being dynamically generated (CGI), the address is more of an internal technical reference and not something user-friendly. Compare these URLs for example:
Classic web: http://matta.hut.fi/matta/latexopas/index.html
Shows you a simple, easy to read location, which is useful like a path in a file manager.
Modern web: http://www.amazon.com/Minecraft-Essential-Handbook-Official-Mojang/dp/0545669936/
I also hate hiding full email addresses (Score:4, Insightful)
Lots of email clients do this. This creates many problems, and does not do any good what-so-ever.
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iOS 7's Safari currently hides the true URL, and you would not believe how annoying it is for me to use it.
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People prone to fishing don't look at URL bars enough for that to matter.
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That doesn't mean you take the opportunity for learning away for the sake of some stupid hipster aesthetic.
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To the right, the actual address bar shows nothing, except a prompt to "Search Google or type URL"
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ssssssshhh damn you!
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I don't understand this. In chrome the search bar and url bar are already the same field. Firefox, too, and for over a decade if you count "quick bookmarks."
It certainly makes sense for them to be the same field, you only ever use one of the two functions at a time.
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It certainly makes sense for them to be the same field,
Huh? Search is the box in the middle of the page I get when I go to http://www.google.com/ [google.com]. The location field is what I type or paste an explicit URL into. If my location field starts second-guessing what I'm typing like the Google search field does, I'm getting a new browser.
Hacking Google and directing them to alternate sites based on autocomplete is at least a nuisance and possibly a security risk if people don't pay attention.
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Looking at Windows 8, I think you mean the current Microsoft.
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which is the main reason I noscript /.