I agree that URLs should be for machines, and that SEO in url paths is stupid, but I disagree that urls should be hidden from users. If you're talking about br

I agree that URLs should be for machines, and that SEO in url paths is stupid, but I disagree that urls should be hidden from users. If you're talking about browser UI, it could show the full domain, and hide the protocol and url path unless the url is clicked on, but the full url needs to be readily accessible. > Why is this? Why do they ever even see the URL? Because the url often transmits more information than what's in the page title. For better or for worse. Because the web is about inter-site linking. You can't link if you can't see the full url to a page. You seem to think that only automated software or "power users" would ever want to create links. > Why do I care what the link is? You've never wanted to link to anyone else's pages? It's not just power users who do this. Casual internet users share full url links all the time. Requiring more than one click to get at the full URL is burdensome and would change linking on the web. The web is not the only place urls are used, and http, https, spdy are not the only url protocols in existence. In some cases urls are the only information you have about a resource, and it takes quite a while to get additional information. BTIH, for instance, can take a while to get the torrent depending on the initial connection status to the p2p cloud. In other cases, there may never be any additional information about a resource besides the content of the url. You can't hide urls like those. The URL bar needs to stay. It doesn't have to show full url paths all the time, but it needs to be ready to in a click. Search engines already understand this, but they go as far wrong in the other direction with SEO signals based on url paths, which encourages pathological descriptive url paths rather than encouraging url paths that are merely adequately identifying.