Google Abandons Experiment To Show Simplified Domain URLs in Chrome (therecord.media) 56
Google's experiment to hide parts of a site's URL in the Chrome address bar (the Omnibox) has failed and has been removed from the browser earlier this week. From a report: The experiment ran from June 2020 to June 2021. It consisted of a series of options that Google added to the chrome://flags options page that, when enabled, only showed the main domain name of a site (therecord.media) instead of the full page URL (therecord.media/category/article/title).
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
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Most don't even click on the page icon telling them tech.slashdot.org is secure. Why would anyone expect them to read and understand a URL, especially one that uses unicode and is longer than they are tall.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, it's great when things are going well, but a pain in the ass to debug
I see a parallel in Windows tendency to 'hide file extensions' and 'assign an application to known file types'
I can tell you that my first step in debugging a desktop issue is to un-hide file extensions and then (once the actual file type is known) either convert it to the desired file type, or assign an appropriate application for the file
So, imagine you have a company application that is linked to via html
An end user opens ticket, 'The such and such application is broken'. The poor guy that is assigned to fix it shares the user screen and sees the 'wrong' url, now they are going to waste time trying to get Chrome to display the correct url, even though they may be on the correct url (and some other issue is present) and Chrome is doing its darndest to hide it from you
That is why it is such a big deal, not simple readability for some end user
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I remember AnnaKournikova.jpg.vbs in 2001
There was an older mainframer on the other side of my cubical wall who was a tennis enthusiast
Anna was pretty big on the tennis scene as a hottie who could play and a frequent topic of conversation for the mainframer
One minute I hear him muttering happily about Anna, then a moan as his desktop locked up, followed by moans coming from around the cube farm as all of his contacts had their desktops lock up
Of course, I had 'hide known file types' turned off and mocked th
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The issue is that malicious actors have been abusing subdomains for at least a decade now and the regular people you're referring to are still being tricked by it.
To me I feel like the solution to the problem is more along the lines of pulling the domain out into a box with the padlock, e.g. () facebook.com | cdn.facebook.com/foo/bar/somecrap
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I'm pretty sure they mean things like "fa.cebook.com". Some browsers help point this out by making the domain a different colour that stands out.
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
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Best of both worlds - bold the hostname (Score:5, Interesting)
I can understand wanting people to realize that BankOne.com:7$6$@hacker.com isn't their bank website.
And I like to see the full URL.
It seems to me that the best of both would be to show the full URL, with the hostname in bold.
Re:Best of both worlds - bold the hostname (Score:4, Interesting)
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A very large part of the root of the problem is the terrible decision of allowing Unicode hostnames in the first place. Yes, yes, "racist / privilege / etc", and yes, it sucks especially hard for countries that aren't using some form of the Latin alphabet, but even so, with hindsight it's easy to see that NOT adding that would have been the better move. It simply made things worse for EVERYONE, including the Asian countries etc: Japan alone has dozens of glyphs that people constantly misread, even at high s
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What are they trying to accomplish by removing it?
Currently most browsers will main the Domain name in bold where it is more visible. Which I think is enough as it will allow your eye go to what site you really are on.
However what is the point in removing the rest of the URL path and query parameters?
Right now I see the following...
well I cant show you my URL that I am seeing because Slashdot thinks it is ascii art.... but look at your URL
So I can quickly see that I am still on Slashdot.org still. that I a
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What are they trying to accomplish by removing it?
Reducing knowledge and making people even more reliant on search engines to find things?
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They do this all the time, hiding the url you're typing inside a Google search in the drop down of selections and putting the actual url at the bottom.
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That is a highly emotional response towards some random posters, mostly snarky response to the question. Just because some random guy on the internet says it, it doesn't mean it is true, or accurate.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Now they need to get rid of search in the address bar. Not only is it a bad idea for UI (the same component should not do different things based on context) but it is also bad security wise. The whole idea of the browser grabbing focus from a form that is displayed in the data area and transmitting data with each keystroke is pretty bad. Grabbing focus tends to grab it at times you aren't expecting and for people that touch type, its too easy to type in usernames or passwords and sending them out unexpectedly.
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Now if they'll just abandon other things. (Score:4, Insightful)
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I got sick of this so I made my default search engine "Anti-search". It has a blank (null) keyword and Query URL of https://%s
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in FF, go to about:config and set keyword.enabled to false to treat all text in the address bar as URLs and not as search keywords for search engines.
Mixing the URLs with search engines is one of the most evil and stupid things that the browsers have done this century and millennium.
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Keyword searches are handy if there are sites you often search, like a dictionary or Wikipedia. What's stupid is treating things as a search by default.
Great, now put the protocol back up there. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Install Google's Suspicious Site Reporter extension. You don't have to use it for anything, but simply having it installed will make http and https show up again
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Nifty trick, and certainly contradicts their BS that protocol in the bar doesn't matter.
Totally agree (Score:2)
Hiding anything from the URL is stupid.
Yes I also really dislike this trend of hiding the https:/// [https] part of the URL. As you say it makes editing the URL annoying. Maybe a case could be made for it if you are having to truncate the URL because of length, but even there truncate items after the hostname if anything.
I also feel like hiding any aspect of the URL make security worse for users.
Now freeze the browser UI entirely (Score:2)
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Why would you ever use Android Chrome when they explicitly prevent you from installing Ad Blockers without rooting your system meaning you have a choice between a security risk, and a security risk?
Use Firefox or Edge, on Android - both of them let you keep your phone fast, secure, and efficient.
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There's a simple solution (Score:5, Interesting)
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I'd just be happy... (Score:2)
... if they could stop Chrome from crashing constantly ever since I upgraded to FC33 (also present in FC34) :P Chromium doesn't crash, but gets lots of inconsistent "This media cannot be played" errors. And upgrading to 34 made copy-paste stop working.
Well, time to try FC35 beta....
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Obfuscation is deception not "experiment" (Score:2)
That is all.
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Well, testing how much deception your victim is willing to accept before noticing something and protesting is an experiment.
Why did they ever want to do this to begin with? (Score:3)
Like everyone else here seems to be saying; the idea seems stupid to me. A URL is a specific link to a page, and I'd expect my browser to properly display it as-is. Trying to hide or manipulate it any way seems like a waste of CPU cycles and just adds confusion. What problem was this trying to solve? When I read Google's discussion of the original experiment, it sounds like they just felt it would look "cleaner" to present only the primary site/domain name at the top until you hovered a mouse over it or did some action to view the whole thing. But it's not like people visit a page and have no idea what site they're visiting until they review the URL at the top! I mean, do you visit here and think, "I have no idea what I'm looking at. Oh, wait! My URL says slashdot.org. Ok, it's Slashdot!"?
Maybe this reflects a larger problem of browser developers running out of ideas? When do you decide the product is mature and really only needs maintenance/bug fixes? I feel like almost all the recent UI changes I've seen to major browsers are unnecessary or sometimes steps backwards. I don't even like the way programs like FIrefox default to hiding the menu bar. I regularly need to click options on the menus and the narrow strip of space it uses to keep it displayed doesn't put a dent in the screen real-estate left to view the page content on any relatively decent monitor. Has this even mattered since people ran 640x480 as standard VGA resolution??
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Maybe it's the M$ developers who thought it would be a great idea. M$ has hidden actual file paths for years. I have found it terribly annoying to come from a real OS that doesn't lie to me and have to poke around user directories in Windows to find files that aren't hidden but placed in deceptive folders.
Show me full paths. Don't lie to me!
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I suppose it would be handy to direct users between preferred partner websites. Without raising alarm bells that this isn't the same web page we directed you to last week.
Like Safari? Looks like it (Score:2)
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They removed it from elsewhere (Score:2)
I used to be able to tell what site was on what tab without switching. Now there are only these simplified cards.
Plain Domain (Score:1)
You know it... (Score:2)