5 ms·

Right next to that copy icon is a pencil - the edit icon.

jonny383 7y ago
Okay I didnt see that. But why is this necessary? What was wrong with the text box that opened what you would expect - the box filled out with the url of the page you are on? In my opinion this is still a gentle push to encourage users to just type in a search query instead.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > Okay I didnt see that. But why is this necessary? Probably because URL copy or share (the two icons besides edit than the new UI provides) are more common interactions than URL editing, and are (without a keyboard and with a traditional text edit control for the URL bar) higher friction; this streamlines the common usecases at the cost of adding an extra tap for URL editing.
  - jonny383 7y ago
    The old version opened with the text fully selected. You could either type a query and overwrite the text, edit the url, or tap and hold to get... Low and behold, copy and share. The only thing they have added is confusion and behavorial conditioning. I see no benefits of the "new" way.
    - wffurr 7y ago
      So what you are saying is the most common actions, copy and share, were behind a confusing an easy to mess up long press gesture. A whole lot of people in this thread have never watched a normal person use a smartphone in a UX study.
      - jonny383 7y ago
        I'm saying it operates as mobile users have learnt to use over the past decade (and how the rest of the OS UI works).
        wffurr 7y ago
        Long press, especially on selected text, has always been a subpar user interaction. None of this UX design is perfect or totally settled, especially since it's only been 10 years since it's been mainstream.
        dragonwriter 7y ago
        > Long press, especially on selected text, has always been a subpar user interaction. Exactly, and other than web pages (before this UX change), virtually every other well-defined piece of content that is likely to be shared had a prominent, distinct, easy-access share button on mobile (the separate copy to clipboard button added for URLs is not a common affordance; in most cases that functionality is one of many options accessed through the sharing function. OTOH, for URLs and certain other shared content, copying-and-paste is a particularly common sharing method, so promoting it to a first-class option further streamlines a common use case. ) This change actually better aligns the browser with every other way of interacting with shareable content on mobile rather than violating mobile UX expectations.
        brokenmachine 7y ago
        Long press is fine, it's the autoselection of words that messes me up (on Android). I click the url bar in Chrome, then the whole url shows up selected. Then I long-press to copy the url, but no! It auto-selects only a single word in the url and brings up the option to copy just that single word. Stupid. Yes I know that I can click on the lock icon and then on the url, and that's what I usually end up doing, but that is also stupid. Edit: sometimes it seems to bring the original url down in a dropdown with share/copy/edit buttons, but that doesn't seem to happen all the time. I haven't worked out why the dropdown often doesn't activate.
        shadowgovt 7y ago
        There are enough new active daily users on mobile devices for the UX that users have learned over the past decade to be less relevant than whether an average user is confused.
    - userbinator 7y ago
      If they wanted to make copy/share/whatever else easier, they could've just made those buttons appear with the first tap, but also not change the immediate editability of the selected text like it was before. That's why all those other comments here about how they made copy and share easier are beside the point --- it's definitely possible to do that without making editing harder. Sadly it seems the skill of adding new functionality and making things easier without breaking existing functionality and making things harder is not common these days... but that's really what I think people making changes should focus on and deeply consider.
dredmorbius 7y ago
Yes: you cannot DIRECTLY edit the URL in the navbar. Nor, for that matter, can you click, ctrl-A (yes, Virginia, I have and use a Bluetooth keyboard). Instead it's click, then Copy Icon. Utterly blinkered. Oddly: Incognito mode is not (yet) crippled in this manner. Don't get me started on pull-to-nuke-whatever-you'd-been-composing-or-losing-your-place-in-infernal-scroll
- saghm 7y ago
  > yes, Virginia, I have and use a Bluetooth clipboard I'm assuming from context that your mean keyboard, but the idea sounds kind of cool so I have to ask: any chance this is a term for a a bluetooth device solely designed to facilitate copy-pasting between other devices?
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    Yes, thanks, edited. For cross-device control, there's ... Synergy, I think: https://symless.com/synergy https://symless.com/synergy There's an Android client (I've no experience with it): https://sourceforge.net/projects/synergyandroid/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/synergyandroid/ On the Android, there's Termux which offers a clipboard interface -- termux-clipboard-get and termux-clipboard-set which I've aliased as "xp" and "xc" respectively. (I have similar aliases for Linux and MacOS's respective clipboard manipulators.) You can paste (including to remote SSH sessions) with the ctrl-alt-v keystroke. It's possibly to select and copy screen regions, but tediously, so that piping to / from xc / xp is far more convenient. (I sometimes use this for composing / editing HN comments, more frequently on other sites.)
  - Rebelgecko 7y ago
    Logitech (and probably others) make wireless keyboards that let you copy/paste between different devices edit: I should mention that I think this requires drivers on the computer end, so probably won't on iOS/Android
    - efreak 7y ago
      Such a keyboard wouldn't need drivers if it's programmed in to send multiple keypresses--ctrl+[axcv] works on standard Android text inputs and selections, as do the shift, arrows, home, end, pgup/dn etc.
userbinator 7y ago
In other words, an obfuscation of functionality that clearly shows their attempts at behavioural conditioning.
- clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
  More like- how often do you edit a URL in the bar on mobile? It's a pain in the ass.
  - harry8 7y ago
    Every single time someone im's me some url with a bunch of tracking garbage after the ?
    - rapnie 7y ago
      I don't use Chrome but you have tracking token stripper plugin: https://github.com/jparise/chrome-utm-stripper https://github.com/jparise/chrome-utm-stripper
      - thenewnewguy 7y ago
        I'll get right to installing that extension on Chrome for Android...
  - jimmaswell 7y ago
    I do often enough.
  - ddingus 7y ago
    Not really. I do it regularly.
  - wruza 7y ago
    At this point one should question why it is pain in the ass, not how often does one edit it because it is. Browsers could easily show Notes.app-like editing window for a long urls. There is no reason to force it to be a one-liner, except that it is historical.

Okay I didnt see that. But why is this necessary? What was wrong with the text box that opened what you would expect - the box filled out with the url of the page you are on? In my opinion this is still a gentle push to encourage users to just type in a search query instead.

dragonwriter 7y ago
> Okay I didnt see that. But why is this necessary? Probably because URL copy or share (the two icons besides edit than the new UI provides) are more common interactions than URL editing, and are (without a keyboard and with a traditional text edit control for the URL bar) higher friction; this streamlines the common usecases at the cost of adding an extra tap for URL editing.
- jonny383 7y ago
  The old version opened with the text fully selected. You could either type a query and overwrite the text, edit the url, or tap and hold to get... Low and behold, copy and share. The only thing they have added is confusion and behavorial conditioning. I see no benefits of the "new" way.
  - wffurr 7y ago
    So what you are saying is the most common actions, copy and share, were behind a confusing an easy to mess up long press gesture. A whole lot of people in this thread have never watched a normal person use a smartphone in a UX study.
    - jonny383 7y ago
      I'm saying it operates as mobile users have learnt to use over the past decade (and how the rest of the OS UI works).
      - wffurr 7y ago
        Long press, especially on selected text, has always been a subpar user interaction. None of this UX design is perfect or totally settled, especially since it's only been 10 years since it's been mainstream.
        dragonwriter 7y ago
        > Long press, especially on selected text, has always been a subpar user interaction. Exactly, and other than web pages (before this UX change), virtually every other well-defined piece of content that is likely to be shared had a prominent, distinct, easy-access share button on mobile (the separate copy to clipboard button added for URLs is not a common affordance; in most cases that functionality is one of many options accessed through the sharing function. OTOH, for URLs and certain other shared content, copying-and-paste is a particularly common sharing method, so promoting it to a first-class option further streamlines a common use case. ) This change actually better aligns the browser with every other way of interacting with shareable content on mobile rather than violating mobile UX expectations.
        brokenmachine 7y ago
        Long press is fine, it's the autoselection of words that messes me up (on Android). I click the url bar in Chrome, then the whole url shows up selected. Then I long-press to copy the url, but no! It auto-selects only a single word in the url and brings up the option to copy just that single word. Stupid. Yes I know that I can click on the lock icon and then on the url, and that's what I usually end up doing, but that is also stupid. Edit: sometimes it seems to bring the original url down in a dropdown with share/copy/edit buttons, but that doesn't seem to happen all the time. I haven't worked out why the dropdown often doesn't activate.
      - shadowgovt 7y ago
        There are enough new active daily users on mobile devices for the UX that users have learned over the past decade to be less relevant than whether an average user is confused.
  - userbinator 7y ago
    If they wanted to make copy/share/whatever else easier, they could've just made those buttons appear with the first tap, but also not change the immediate editability of the selected text like it was before. That's why all those other comments here about how they made copy and share easier are beside the point --- it's definitely possible to do that without making editing harder. Sadly it seems the skill of adding new functionality and making things easier without breaking existing functionality and making things harder is not common these days... but that's really what I think people making changes should focus on and deeply consider.

dredmorbius 7y ago

Yes: you cannot DIRECTLY edit the URL in the navbar. Nor, for that matter, can you click, ctrl-A (yes, Virginia, I have and use a Bluetooth keyboard). Instead it's click, then Copy Icon. Utterly blinkered. Oddly: Incognito mode is not (yet) crippled in this manner. Don't get me started on pull-to-nuke-whatever-you'd-been-composing-or-losing-your-place-in-infernal-scroll

saghm 7y ago
> yes, Virginia, I have and use a Bluetooth clipboard I'm assuming from context that your mean keyboard, but the idea sounds kind of cool so I have to ask: any chance this is a term for a a bluetooth device solely designed to facilitate copy-pasting between other devices?
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Yes, thanks, edited. For cross-device control, there's ... Synergy, I think: https://symless.com/synergy https://symless.com/synergy There's an Android client (I've no experience with it): https://sourceforge.net/projects/synergyandroid/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/synergyandroid/ On the Android, there's Termux which offers a clipboard interface -- termux-clipboard-get and termux-clipboard-set which I've aliased as "xp" and "xc" respectively. (I have similar aliases for Linux and MacOS's respective clipboard manipulators.) You can paste (including to remote SSH sessions) with the ctrl-alt-v keystroke. It's possibly to select and copy screen regions, but tediously, so that piping to / from xc / xp is far more convenient. (I sometimes use this for composing / editing HN comments, more frequently on other sites.)
- Rebelgecko 7y ago
  Logitech (and probably others) make wireless keyboards that let you copy/paste between different devices edit: I should mention that I think this requires drivers on the computer end, so probably won't on iOS/Android
  - efreak 7y ago
    Such a keyboard wouldn't need drivers if it's programmed in to send multiple keypresses--ctrl+[axcv] works on standard Android text inputs and selections, as do the shift, arrows, home, end, pgup/dn etc.

userbinator 7y ago

In other words, an obfuscation of functionality that clearly shows their attempts at behavioural conditioning.

clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
More like- how often do you edit a URL in the bar on mobile? It's a pain in the ass.
- harry8 7y ago
  Every single time someone im's me some url with a bunch of tracking garbage after the ?
  - rapnie 7y ago
    I don't use Chrome but you have tracking token stripper plugin: https://github.com/jparise/chrome-utm-stripper https://github.com/jparise/chrome-utm-stripper
    - thenewnewguy 7y ago
      I'll get right to installing that extension on Chrome for Android...
- jimmaswell 7y ago
  I do often enough.
- ddingus 7y ago
  Not really. I do it regularly.
- wruza 7y ago
  At this point one should question why it is pain in the ass, not how often does one edit it because it is. Browsers could easily show Notes.app-like editing window for a long urls. There is no reason to force it to be a one-liner, except that it is historical.