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One of the worst security bugs of browsers is the combined url/search bar. But Google loves it! What about .corp subdomains?
by exabrial 2y ago
One of the worst security bugs of browsers is the combined url/search bar. But Google loves it!
What about .corp subdomains?
- anakaine 2y agoWe had them separated once upon a time. UX was arguably worse.
- efraim 2y agoI have them separated in firefox because i find it superior.
- notpushkin 2y agoMe too. I search through both URL bar and search bar, and sometimes I use the search bar as a scratchpad of sorts – very convenient IMO.
- pockybum522 2y agoAgreed. When I go to modify my searches after clicking through a few pages and realizing I'm not getting what I need, I don't have to hit back n times until I get back to the search. The alternative would be always opening search results in a new tab until I find what I'm looking for, but I don't need more tab clutter.
- GoblinSlayer 2y agoI have it too, but unfortunately this only gives you two search boxes, behavior of the url bar doesn't change.
- legacynl 2y agoI'm pretty sure that you can fully disable search in the URL bar by changing 'browser.fixup.alternate.enabled' to false
- williamscales 2y agoPersonally I like them separate. But I’ve been working with folks who are not very computer literate at all and I think I agree with you. If one doesn’t know what a URL is in the first place, how would one distinguish which box to type in?
- small_scombrus 2y agoHaving them be the same can make tech support a nightmare trying to figure out whether someone actually successfully entered a URL or if they just googled it :( (I personally love the URL bar & search bar being the same bar)
- williamscales 2y agoI get the luxury of working with folks in person. In 99% of cases the search produces the right website as the first result. But yeah idk maybe AOL had something going with keywords in some sense in terms of accessibility ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- int_19h 2y agoThe one that says "Search" in it?
- williamscales 2y agoYou’d be surprised how many folks don’t turn up their font size when they have bad vision
- yencabulator 2y agoYou'd be surprised how hard adjusting font sizes in UI elements can be.
- zzo38computer 2y agoIt should not need to be, if designed well. For example, the operating system facilities could make it that UI sizes will be specified by character size instead of by pixels, and then the operating system facilities can allow the user to adjust the UI fonts, so that any programs could use them.
- zzo38computer 2y agoI think that it does not need a separate area of the screen reserved for searching, but that there should be an explicit way to indicate that you want to search. For example, this could be a popup window. Unlike the URL, which it is useful to be displayed even if you are not entering a new URL, this is not necessary for entering search queries, so using a popup window for this purpose may be helpful.
- wkat4242 2y agoI think it's the autocomplete in particular that leaks a lot of private data. I've rarely had the combined bar do a search when I didn't want it to. But I use firefox and I turned off autocomplete. And I use my own search instance (SearXNG)
- bmacho 2y agoIIRC there is no setting in Firefox to keep the content of the URL bar local.
- legacynl 2y agoHow could searchengines provide suggestions without your browser sending the url-bar content? If you want the content of your URL bar to stay local you should disable suggestions
- GoblinSlayer 2y agoThey can do it like they previously did it: provide suggestions by sending the search box content.
- legacynl 2y agoHow is that different in the case of a combined search&url bar?
- mrngm 2y agoYou'll need to explicitly navigate to the input box _designated_ for using a search engine. If I'm accidentally pasting what I thought was a URL but actually is some other text in the paste buffer in the combined input box, that text is already sent to the search engine (provided suggestions are enabled, which they are by default). If I do the same in the split URL/search box situation, and paste it in the URL box, it would at most look into the browser's history, keeping the input local.
- deleted 2y ago
- zzo38computer 2y agoI had managed to make a old version of Firefox to treat URLs entered in the location bar as relative. In my opinion, this is the reasonable way to work. The computer doesn't have to guess what you mean, and does not have to guess if the TLD is valid. It will do what you typed into the computer; and if it is an error, will display the error message. For searching, I had done that if you put a colon at first and then the name of the search engine, then it will search.
- Dalewyn 2y agoNo, everyone loves it. By everyone I mean the vast majority of the world. The fact of the matter is most people do not grok addresses, so a dedicated address bar is useless to them. It's bad user interface design that defies what most people can do. Here's how most people actually use a web browser if they want to go somewhere, say Amazon: 1. Type "amazon". 2. Enter. 3. First result is (probably) amazon.com. 4. Click. 5. ???? 6. PROFIT! In the dark ages this was facilitated by setting the home page to a search engine like Google, changing the address bar to a search bar removes that additional step making it that much easier for the common man. Is it horrible for security and privacy? Yeah. But you write a web browser for users, not security and privacy nazis.
- _64dn 2y ago> nazis Could we please not use such a term for privacy/security conscious people? Maybe it’s because I am German but I feel very uncomfortable being called such.
- Dalewyn 2y ago[flagged]
- GoblinSlayer 2y agoIt does break user expectation. 1. Type "mycompany-internal-gitlab". 2. Enter. 3. The expected thing should happen.