10 ms·
99.9% of users have no idea what any of the words you just said mean. The change was made for them, not for you (the .1%)
by soared 8y ago
99.9% of users have no idea what any of the words you just said mean. The change was made for them, not for you (the .1%)
- tinus_hn 8y agoSo they can be hacked in serene bliss. A stupid decision.
- dagenix 8y agoHacked how?
- macspoofing 8y ago>The change was made for them, not for you Except, those same users also don't care about things in the address bar. So the change hurts the group of users that actually do care.
- ehsankia 8y agoThey didn't care so far because it was so confusing. The hope is that by showing something that's user-relevant (the name of the website name and the security level), it will become more useful for the average user. Why should a user see: https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada?utm=asdioasd&arg=j210dj9102d12 https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada?utm=asdioasd&arg=j210d... when all they care about is "Wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada"?
- nqzero 8y agothe only thing you've changed is now those 99.9% users can't even find the information they need to ask the .1% for help great work
- nkkollaw 8y agoAccording to Apple, they care about "wikipedia.org", only.
- freehunter 8y agoBecause arguments aren't always useless like in your example. Might as well just do away with the whole URL bar and just have a green checkmark if Chrome thinks it's the site you want. I mean, why should a user see "Wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada" when all they care about is "This is the Wikipedia Page for Canada"?
- md_ 8y agoI know you’re being sarcastic, but if chrome could, with perfect accuracy, indicate if this was “the site you want”, why not do away with the url? Mind you, I’m not suggesting to do away with linking, as some rando suggested this implies. (While chrome doesn’t show the protocol prefix, it still copies the prefix when you copy the url, so imagine a similar ui.) But for most users, wouldn’t a ui that shows “server identity” in some more user-coherent way be what they want? In particular, do subdomains help or hurt phishing detection?
- freehunter 8y agoIf we could, I'd be all for it. Have an option that says "show URL bar or not" and by default hide the URL bar, optionally show the whole thing. Especially on space-constrained devices like cell phones where every pixel counts. Just show the page's title. I think we're a long way away from that ideal, though, and some web pages may not be designed with this ideal in mind.
- scrollaway 8y agoYou're making a hypothetical based on "with perfect accuracy"... but the much simpler change here (www vs. no www) is not done "with perfect accuracy", as clearly outlined by a bunch of comments in this thread.
- ehsankia 8y agoSo you're saying we should show all users www., just because that one site in a billion that shows a different non-www. page, for that one user in a million that would even notice that difference? Chrome is a browser for the mainstream people. The feature you're asking for is for power users and extreme edge cases.
- softawre 8y agoI like how HN cuts off the end of that url.
- type0 8y agohttp://www.example.com http://www.example.com https://www.example.com https://www.example.com http://example.com http://example.com https://example.com https://example.com do not have to be the same website and there are cases where it isn't the same site! Which site you visit does matter and not just for internet banking. If it becomes that easy if we hide things maybe we should hide the half of the traffic lights as well.
- ehsankia 8y agoThose examples don't prove anything. First off, the http ones would appear different, they would have no lock. And 99.999999% of websites don't have a different www. and non-www. page. Showing www. for that 1 in a billion site, for that 1 in a million user, is insane.
- ryandrake 8y agoI wonder if there is any research or evidence that users actually find “www.” confusing enough to go through the trouble of removing it.
- peterwwillis 8y agoWhat if the user sees "Wik1pedia.org/wiki/Canada"? Or "аррӏе.com"? Hiding random parts of the address isn't going to make browsing the web better. The main purpose of URLs is for hyperlinks, not as a highly intuitive user interface. Users who don't know how URLs work don't care what is up there. They only care that what they are looking at is what they expect, and a way to get to where they want to go. And that's a complicated problem. The URL bar hiding thing isn't for users, it's for Google to push Google search. That's why they attempted to remove the URL bar entirely four years ago and replace it with a search bar.
- md_ 8y agoDon’t Firefox and Safari also have a single bar for searches? Yet neither company runs a search engine. I don’t suppose it’s possible this is just better for most users?
- Multicomp 8y agoFirefox will allow you to search via the address bar, but it still has a separate search bar to the right by default.
- joshuamorton 8y agoThis doesn't appear to be the case? [1]:https://www.techworld.com/download/internet-tools/firefox-63-beta-3-3250000/ https://www.techworld.com/download/internet-tools/firefox-63...
- r3bl 8y agoIt still exists, but the default changed. Now you can go to menu -> Customize and drag it where you want.
- qu4z-2 8y agoAlso, if you go into about:config and turn off keyword.enabled, the address bar will no longer search. It's very useful if you don't want to Google internal/client URLs just because you accidentally copied a space at the start or the hostname doesn't resolve in your current environment, etc.
- majewsky 8y agoBecause there is a huge difference between those two: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada
- vntok 8y agoIf the browser absolutely 100% of the time knew that difference and showed "Wikipedia FR > Canada", wouldn't it be much simpler for the average user? The browser could even show specialized UI such as "FR" as a clickable dropdown menu to allow users to switch languages. Chrome already does this for searching a single website through the address bar (type domain.com TAB) Basically these changes are not thought for you. You are not representative of the average Web user.
- px1999 8y agoMaybe it could show "Canada - Wikipedia" like the page authors intended as a title. Maybe if the page authors want to have links between languages, they could code that in a standard markup language themselves. These aren't decisions for a useragent to make, and there aren't enough browsers out there that people have a reasonable choice. Bastardising the url isn't a solution to anything, it's a step towards something that Google, not users, want (in making AMP "trivial").
- vntok 8y agoA useragent is literally a user's agent, it is supposed to help its user browse their target website. It is not supposed to help the target website show things to the user.
- Lyrkan 8y agoHiding the URL would be a terrible idea, no matter how much "simpler" it would be for the average user: it would either only be enabled for a handful of websites chosen by Google (which would mean having an inconsistent UI) or create a lot of security issues (what if someone creates a website and manages to also display "Wikipedia FR" with a similar layout?).
- 8y ago
- always_good 8y agoIt matters because deep-linking is possible on the web. Hiding it just seems like a trivial UI matter that makes things slightly more obnoxious when you do care. I'd be surprised if only showing the domain vs domain+path made any difference on phishing results. I don't think these little tricks do much for the user. For example, browsers now highlight https websites with green in the url bar and show a little lock icon. But how is that actionable information for the user? To what extent does that mean you can trust that website, and how does the average person interpret it? Phishing websites use https, too. I would avoid stealing any pages from Safari's UI. That browser doesn't even show favicons on browser tabs to let you quickly distinguish them.
- eponeponepon 8y agoAll they actually care about is "Wikipedia - Canada". Which is right there on the page.
- ThePadawan 8y ago99.9% of motor vehicle users have no use for airbags. We still keep them for the .1%.
- saudioger 8y agoThis is a very bad analogy. Anyone in a car crash potentially benefits from airbags without knowing anything about them (or even if they exist at all). The 99.9% of people who don't even know the difference between www and non-www will never directly benefit from seeing www, ever.
- shrimp_emoji 8y agoWe must avoid friction between two types of user, 99.9%er and 0.1%er. We could have separate browsers aimed at each. One browser should be dead simple, secure, and streamlined, aimed at the 99.9%s. Maybe it could be named after a metal. Another browser, for the 0.1%s, should include technical arcana on screen and have more mutability, perhaps even at the cost of some performance and security. This one could be named after some kind of canid.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> The 99.9% of people who don't even know the difference between www and non-www will never directly benefit from seeing www, ever. You don't need to know the difference to be able to read the URL off, potentially to someone who does. It's not impossible (though it's not a good idea) for “example.com” and “www.example.com” to both host web content, and whether or not they know or care about the meaning of the domain name, someone accessing one should be able to, in the event they have a problem, be able to read off which one they are accessing to the person trying to help them resolve the problem.
- mirko22 8y agounless they need help and get one of those .1 percent to help them out
- Sidnicious 8y agoAirbags have utility for 100% of motor vehicle users.
- some_account 8y agoLet's dumb down the internet even more because non technical users feel confused. Maybe we can actually remove the url field and just let the isp decide where they should go? They could offer a choice of 10 popular sites, like TV channels.. :)
- rmason 8y agoActually Google's long term plan is to do away with the URL completely, they just haven't figured out how yet. https://www.wired.com/story/google-wants-to-kill-the-url/ https://www.wired.com/story/google-wants-to-kill-the-url/
- download13 8y agoWe're always going to need to see URLs. They're not going away. They're just talking about a better default view to show the user relevant information about where they are, which would be a good thing. Being generous, maybe half of users can look at a URL and immediately identify the domain they are on. That's terrible, and goes a long way to explaining why phishing attacks are so prevalent. I'm actually pretty excited to see what they come up with. If it's even marginally better than what we have now I'd be all for it. I'm guessing they'll end up showing some combination of the domain and page title by default (which might incentivize more sites to FIX THEIR GODDAM TITLE SCHEMES!).
- josefx 8y ago> We're always going to need to see URLs. I can see the future now: User enters his target (mybank) into the Google search bar on his Google Android device, the device opens Google Chrome with the Google amp page form mybank already loaded. The user never has to worry about urls or where exactly he is entering his banking information and login critera. Google makes everything a clean and seamless experience and user never has to leave its warm embrance.
- nofunsir 8y agoAdd eyeball tracking into this mix, and we can "allow" users to "experience" unskippable ads. In all seriousness, I have no doubt this is due largely to Google's frustration at Ad Blockers. If there is no URL, and you're in the Google Garden protocol, there is no way to block ads, or at least no way to NOT download them.
- wpietri 8y agoYou're missing jwr's point. He's arguing that this is harmful for users, especially the ones who don't know what the words mean. If I were solving this, I'd instead push to eliminate "www" altogether, not sweep it under the rug. It was useful circa 1996, when users might plausibly be using something other than the WWW with a browser. But it has become entirely vestigial.
- tribune 8y agoHow can you eliminate "www" altogether? It's just a subdomain like any other now
- stedaniels 8y agoIt's actually very useful for isolating access to the root of the domain. Say for instance you use a third-party SaaS/CMS to host your website and have other services on other subdomains. If it's hosted on the root of the domain it had more power than if it's on a subdomain.
- uberman 8y agoWhy not drop .com then as well? Most sites are on .com domains after all. It is exactly the same issue. A domain is a domain. Google is arbitrarily dictating your CNAME from the user's perspective. What if you don't serve your site off of mysite.com is google going to automatically try again at www.mysite.com? What if you have distinct content at both domains? This decision is stupid.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- wpietri 8y agoIt's not the same issue at all, in that domains with different suffixes are controlled by different people while foo.com and www.foo.com are controlled by the same people. If you have an example of somebody who needs to serve different web content for foo.com and www.foo.com, I look forward to seeing it. But I've never seen one, and when I've seen it happen accidentally it's due to idiocy.
- theandrewbailey 8y agoCitation needed. Did you ask anyone? Did you do any research?
- ggggtez 8y agoPresumably your question is for the Chrome team, and I'm gonna assume the answer is: yes, of course they did research. They did research for the padlock, etc too.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y agoThis excuse is used far too often to justify why things have to suck.
- cmiles74 8y agoThis makes me think that developers should start moving away from Chrome. Firefox, for instance, still supplies the full URL.
- eam 8y agoWell, might as well drop then entire stuff after the domain.com/{dump all this out} (the file path) since non-techy people don't really care about it. All they care is about clicking links and navigating... /end sarcasm
- berbec 8y agoDoesn't Safari on macos do this?
- eam 8y agoI'm a Firefox user so I don't typically use Safari, but I just did try it right now and I guess they do!
- ddebernardy 8y agoThere thankfully is a setting to show the full url, but yeah, Safari on macOS does that by default. The change occurred around Lion (give or take a major version) if memory serves me well.
- cpeterso 8y agoMaybe the address bar UI will next hide query string parameters because they are an implementation detail? So Google News would be displayed as "news.google.com" instead of "news.google.com/?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en".
- type0 8y agoFrom the business point of view that would make perfect sense. The user wont be able to remember the url and even second guess it so that would need the "help" of google, cause everyone knows that "google is your friend".
- oneeyedpigeon 8y agoTBH, so long as there always remains the option to show the full URL, I'd be totally fine with completely hiding it by default. Safari all but does that right now.
- quickben 8y agoAfter 20 years, the number isn't 99.9%. But: Should chrome redirect all DuckDuckGo queries to Google.com because 99.9% use Google anyways?
- anticensor 8y agoYes, and it should also pretend that you searched on DDG by imitating all interfaces and developer console records.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- da_chicken 8y ago99.9% of users don't know either way. The change neither improves nor harms their experience, it merely obfuscates what's actually going on under the guise of "user friendly."
- jwr 8y agoAnytime the "average user" or numbers like "99.9% of users" are mentioned, red lights should go off. These kinds of claims are condescending, often untrue, and rarely based on facts.