5 ms·

I actually wouldn't mind if the URL bar was replaced with a breadcrumb bar on some sites, like news and forums. Imagine something like Example.com > Worldnews

I actually wouldn't mind if the URL bar was replaced with a breadcrumb bar on some sites, like news and forums. Imagine something like Example.com > Worldnews > 2020 > 06 > 14 > Big aquatic monster spotted outside of Tokyo or forum.example.com > Sport > Football > Spain > Real Madrid It could then work like in Explorer in Windows 10, where you can press one of the breadcrumb separators and see a menu with siblings, or go straight to all news this month. It could use some manifest file in a standard format on the server for the directory information. Of course, this should never replace the URL completely, you should always be able to get to it easily. But URLs aren't necessarily always the best solution for navigation. We tokenize code and apply different colors, mouse over pop-ups, and links, why should the URL bar be a long raw text string when it's really contains structured data? This Google nonses of hiding everything except the domain is not a good solution IMO, it doesn't solve a problem and makes it harder to navigate, not easier.

kiwidrew 6y ago
Yes, imagine if the browser vendors decided to _improve the usability of the URL bar_ instead of trying to remove it... The only difference between Example.com > Worldnews > 2020 > 06 > 14 > Big aquatic monster spotted outside Tokyo forum.example.com > Sport > Football > Spain > Real Madrid and https://example.com/worldnews/2020/06/14/big-aquatic-monster-spotted-outside-tokyo https://forum.example.com/sport/football/spain/real-madrid is a little bit of reformatting and upcasing and linkifying (or otherwise making selectable) the individual path segments of the URL. And probably some clever logic to deal with the randomforum.php?fid=12345&tpcid=984.3&page=5 goop that is still all-too-common... :/
- Mirioron 6y ago
  >And probably some clever logic to deal with the randomforum.php?fid=12345&tpcid=984.3&page=5 goop that is still all-too-common... :/ You say that as though websites like that are random small sites. HN has that kind of a URL, so do YouTube and Google.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    Hacker News doesn't have breadcrumbs either. The concept of a directory hierarchy inherently doesn't fit. You could try to map the parent ==> child relationship of every individual post URL, which might be cool, but think about how long the URLs would get. For sites with breadcrumbs though, the URL absolutely should follow the crumbs (and I've argued for such at my company).
perryizgr8 6y ago
There was an extension in Firefox that used to do exactly this. Seems like it did not survive the Mozilla War Against Addons, unfortunately.
JimDabell 6y ago
But there's nothing stopping websites from offering that without browser support. It can just show that at the top of the page. Everything it provides is under the authority of the website. The URL needs to be provided by the browser because it's not entirely under the authority of the website, but that's not the case for a breadcrumb bar.
kmfrk 6y ago
On some sites, this could be done using breadcrumbs.jsonld: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/breadcrumb https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/breadcr... Sadly not used everywhere, but maybe browser support would encourage its usage by site owners.
- earthboundkid 6y ago
  I’ve implemented this on my site. The pain in the ass is that Google will only sometimes show you the breadcrumbs, so it’s very difficult to tell if you encoded it correctly.
myfonj 6y ago
There were several extensions that transformed location bar like you propose, but naturally just did simple domain, path and query segments transformation into clickable buttons producing breadcrumbs. It was a delight to use and I miss them in Firefox since Quantum leap prevented them to work any longer. https://www.ghacks.net/2011/03/01/improve-firefoxs-urlbar-with-locationbar2/ https://www.ghacks.net/2011/03/01/improve-firefoxs-urlbar-wi... They by default worked very similarly the aforementioned Windows Explorer, what in focused state with keyboard input turns into "raw" text field.
wyattpeak 6y ago
I really dislike any attempt to modify strings like this. I find it invariably causes problems in edge cases. What if a site handles slashes differently to how Google expects? Where do GET arguments go? What if I want to modify the URL? Breadcrumbs are great when each part is navigable, but does example.com/worldnews/2020/06 actually lead anywhere, or is it an invalid address for the site? I have absolutely no interest in Google being allowed to dictate what should and should not be a valid address. Probably worse than the change itself, though, is the tendency of anyone who makes such a change to start playing fast and loose with actually representing the underlying address. You mention Windows 10's address bar - it's one of the worst offenders. My Windows Explorer is currently sitting in my downloads folder, which is at "C:\Users\Wyatt\Downloads". The address bar reads "This PC > Downloads". When I click on the address bar to edit the address, it changes to just "Downloads". What part of all of this is in any way useful to me or the likely action I'm trying to take when I click on the address bar?
- whoisthemachine 6y ago
  Your arguments are definitely salient. However, I think there is something to this idea - a breadcrumb style approach by default in Chrome would encourage developers to use paths in more standard ways that refer to resources, not heavy parameter coupling. As you noted, there are technical barriers to implementing this solution, which might encourage some other good things - servers providing resource discovery so that the browser can understand valid paths when visiting a site.
  - wyattpeak 6y ago
    I address that in my point: Google deciding what paths developers should use is precisely what I don't want. I'll decide what resources should be discoverable on my site, not Google. I'll decide what paths should be valid, not Google. Google has too much power to dictate standards already, and has been quite happy to use that power for their own sake, rather than the good of the user. I'm not interested in giving them any more.
    - sorenjan 6y ago
Jedd 6y ago
> I actually wouldn't mind if the URL bar was replaced with a breadcrumb bar on some sites ... Which sites? Anyway, almost everyone else would mind. Especially if there was no option to revert to normal behaviour. > It could then work like in Explorer in Windows 10, ... That sounds like the worst of both worlds. If people want Explorer in Windows 10 behaviour - can't they just run Explorer in Windows 10? If people want Chrome as it was yesterday, they've basically got no option now. > But URLs aren't necessarily always the best solution for navigation. The Chromium devs demonstrated their lack of interest in being able to navigate via URL / location bar a half decade ago when they changed the default on all operating systems to be single-click in location bar to 'select the whole address'. I'm beginning to think they are not our friends.
- andrewprock 6y ago
  The option they have is Firefox
- chrismorgan 6y ago
  Note this is talking about Explorer, more recently named File Explorer, rather than Internet Explorer, the browser.
  - Jedd 6y ago
    Argh, of course. My mistake. I typically run up breadcrumbkiller as part of any Microsoft Windows desktop build, so I rarely see that configuration for long.
- satyrnein 6y ago
  For myself (and I'd wager most people), I want to clear the URL and go to a totally different URL much more often than I want to manually manipulate the URL I'm currently on, so I like the change in default. Many casual users probably didn't even know a quick way to select the whole URL when it wasn't the default.
nogabebop23 6y ago
While we often create a mental map between some sort of logical hierarchy and the segments of the url this doesn't have to be the case. A specific domain should be authority on this, not he general-purpose tool used to access it.
- solf 6y ago
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jessaustin 6y ago
Very few URLs are perfectly hierarchical in a way that would work with this scheme. For example, look at the URL of this page you're reading now.
- sorenjan 6y ago
  I think that's a great example of the benefits though. HN could continue to use their fairly opaque URLs in the background, but instead show something like news.ycombinator.com > 2020 > 06 > 14 > Google hides full addresses in URL bar on Chrome 85 This makes it easy to not only see where you are, but also quickly click on a part of the address to go to that hierarchy, or a sibling like yesterdays posts. It makes sense that a forum like this would have a way too see all posts from a day, month, or year. Of course, most if not all users here are comfortable with URLs so they're probably not the ones that would benefit the most. But I think most common users, the ones who Google everything instead of typing in an address, would use the breadcrumb bar while today they probably see the URL as some weird text string they have little interest in or understanding of.
ndespres 6y ago
I find the way Explorer in Windows 10 handles this behavior to be annoying and inconvenient. It finds ways to change paths into new canonical locations, for example browse to C:\Users\Yourname and instead of giving you breadcrumbs like Local Disk > Users > Yourname, it simply shows "Yourname" as a special home folder. When you click back in the address bar, there are no breadcrumbs anymore, it's erased your trail. Attempts to make things simpler by hiding the truth about where you really are in navigation seems like a way to make the web less discoverable except by Google. If you're on a web site you can usually learn more about its structure based on URL format. This makes that more difficult.

kiwidrew 6y ago

Yes, imagine if the browser vendors decided to _improve the usability of the URL bar_ instead of trying to remove it... The only difference between Example.com > Worldnews > 2020 > 06 > 14 > Big aquatic monster spotted outside Tokyo forum.example.com > Sport > Football > Spain > Real Madrid and https://example.com/worldnews/2020/06/14/big-aquatic-monster-spotted-outside-tokyo https://forum.example.com/sport/football/spain/real-madrid is a little bit of reformatting and upcasing and linkifying (or otherwise making selectable) the individual path segments of the URL. And probably some clever logic to deal with the randomforum.php?fid=12345&tpcid=984.3&page=5 goop that is still all-too-common... :/

Mirioron 6y ago
>And probably some clever logic to deal with the randomforum.php?fid=12345&tpcid=984.3&page=5 goop that is still all-too-common... :/ You say that as though websites like that are random small sites. HN has that kind of a URL, so do YouTube and Google.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  Hacker News doesn't have breadcrumbs either. The concept of a directory hierarchy inherently doesn't fit. You could try to map the parent ==> child relationship of every individual post URL, which might be cool, but think about how long the URLs would get. For sites with breadcrumbs though, the URL absolutely should follow the crumbs (and I've argued for such at my company).

perryizgr8 6y ago

There was an extension in Firefox that used to do exactly this. Seems like it did not survive the Mozilla War Against Addons, unfortunately.

JimDabell 6y ago

But there's nothing stopping websites from offering that without browser support. It can just show that at the top of the page. Everything it provides is under the authority of the website. The URL needs to be provided by the browser because it's not entirely under the authority of the website, but that's not the case for a breadcrumb bar.

kmfrk 6y ago

On some sites, this could be done using breadcrumbs.jsonld: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/breadcrumb https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/breadcr... Sadly not used everywhere, but maybe browser support would encourage its usage by site owners.

earthboundkid 6y ago
I’ve implemented this on my site. The pain in the ass is that Google will only sometimes show you the breadcrumbs, so it’s very difficult to tell if you encoded it correctly.

myfonj 6y ago

There were several extensions that transformed location bar like you propose, but naturally just did simple domain, path and query segments transformation into clickable buttons producing breadcrumbs. It was a delight to use and I miss them in Firefox since Quantum leap prevented them to work any longer. https://www.ghacks.net/2011/03/01/improve-firefoxs-urlbar-with-locationbar2/ https://www.ghacks.net/2011/03/01/improve-firefoxs-urlbar-wi... They by default worked very similarly the aforementioned Windows Explorer, what in focused state with keyboard input turns into "raw" text field.

wyattpeak 6y ago

I really dislike any attempt to modify strings like this. I find it invariably causes problems in edge cases. What if a site handles slashes differently to how Google expects? Where do GET arguments go? What if I want to modify the URL? Breadcrumbs are great when each part is navigable, but does example.com/worldnews/2020/06 actually lead anywhere, or is it an invalid address for the site? I have absolutely no interest in Google being allowed to dictate what should and should not be a valid address. Probably worse than the change itself, though, is the tendency of anyone who makes such a change to start playing fast and loose with actually representing the underlying address. You mention Windows 10's address bar - it's one of the worst offenders. My Windows Explorer is currently sitting in my downloads folder, which is at "C:\Users\Wyatt\Downloads". The address bar reads "This PC > Downloads". When I click on the address bar to edit the address, it changes to just "Downloads". What part of all of this is in any way useful to me or the likely action I'm trying to take when I click on the address bar?

whoisthemachine 6y ago
Your arguments are definitely salient. However, I think there is something to this idea - a breadcrumb style approach by default in Chrome would encourage developers to use paths in more standard ways that refer to resources, not heavy parameter coupling. As you noted, there are technical barriers to implementing this solution, which might encourage some other good things - servers providing resource discovery so that the browser can understand valid paths when visiting a site.
- wyattpeak 6y ago
  I address that in my point: Google deciding what paths developers should use is precisely what I don't want. I'll decide what resources should be discoverable on my site, not Google. I'll decide what paths should be valid, not Google. Google has too much power to dictate standards already, and has been quite happy to use that power for their own sake, rather than the good of the user. I'm not interested in giving them any more.
  - sorenjan 6y ago

Jedd 6y ago

> I actually wouldn't mind if the URL bar was replaced with a breadcrumb bar on some sites ... Which sites? Anyway, almost everyone else would mind. Especially if there was no option to revert to normal behaviour. > It could then work like in Explorer in Windows 10, ... That sounds like the worst of both worlds. If people want Explorer in Windows 10 behaviour - can't they just run Explorer in Windows 10? If people want Chrome as it was yesterday, they've basically got no option now. > But URLs aren't necessarily always the best solution for navigation. The Chromium devs demonstrated their lack of interest in being able to navigate via URL / location bar a half decade ago when they changed the default on all operating systems to be single-click in location bar to 'select the whole address'. I'm beginning to think they are not our friends.

andrewprock 6y ago
The option they have is Firefox
chrismorgan 6y ago
Note this is talking about Explorer, more recently named File Explorer, rather than Internet Explorer, the browser.
- Jedd 6y ago
  Argh, of course. My mistake. I typically run up breadcrumbkiller as part of any Microsoft Windows desktop build, so I rarely see that configuration for long.
satyrnein 6y ago
For myself (and I'd wager most people), I want to clear the URL and go to a totally different URL much more often than I want to manually manipulate the URL I'm currently on, so I like the change in default. Many casual users probably didn't even know a quick way to select the whole URL when it wasn't the default.

nogabebop23 6y ago

While we often create a mental map between some sort of logical hierarchy and the segments of the url this doesn't have to be the case. A specific domain should be authority on this, not he general-purpose tool used to access it.

solf 6y ago
Matsjdixjdo 7i. Shsixvxl00nwgxkfuwgskjdhdjdhhhdgehhexhefez

jessaustin 6y ago

Very few URLs are perfectly hierarchical in a way that would work with this scheme. For example, look at the URL of this page you're reading now.

sorenjan 6y ago
I think that's a great example of the benefits though. HN could continue to use their fairly opaque URLs in the background, but instead show something like news.ycombinator.com > 2020 > 06 > 14 > Google hides full addresses in URL bar on Chrome 85 This makes it easy to not only see where you are, but also quickly click on a part of the address to go to that hierarchy, or a sibling like yesterdays posts. It makes sense that a forum like this would have a way too see all posts from a day, month, or year. Of course, most if not all users here are comfortable with URLs so they're probably not the ones that would benefit the most. But I think most common users, the ones who Google everything instead of typing in an address, would use the breadcrumb bar while today they probably see the URL as some weird text string they have little interest in or understanding of.

ndespres 6y ago

I find the way Explorer in Windows 10 handles this behavior to be annoying and inconvenient. It finds ways to change paths into new canonical locations, for example browse to C:\Users\Yourname and instead of giving you breadcrumbs like Local Disk > Users > Yourname, it simply shows "Yourname" as a special home folder. When you click back in the address bar, there are no breadcrumbs anymore, it's erased your trail. Attempts to make things simpler by hiding the truth about where you really are in navigation seems like a way to make the web less discoverable except by Google. If you're on a web site you can usually learn more about its structure based on URL format. This makes that more difficult.