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Chrome May Drop the URL Bar
An anonymous reader writes "There isn't much Google can still eliminate from the browser's interface. Yet Google appears to be considering a drastic step to free up space in the UI: It may simply kill the URL bar. Instead of showing the URL bar all the time, it may be hidden within tabs. There are some other features coming as well. For example, Google will allow users to be logged into different Google accounts at the same time, as long as you use those accounts in different windows."
Let Google be your portal to the entire Internet! Sheesh.
I guess the "Really Stupid Idea Department" really does exist because I can only see dropping the address bar as a time-losing feature. In Opera I have two horizontal bars, one for the menu and one for everything else (address, navigation, other buttons). Just make your UI extremely configurable, like Opera's, and you have no problems. I have my tabs stacked vertically on the left hand side. I can have more than 50 tabs visible, this way, with no downside.
...but that's going a little overboard. The one thing that you really shouldn't ever try to shuffle away on a browser is the URL bar.
I don't think that's something I could ever get used to.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
Sounds like a GREAT way to make phishing attempts easier
I've thought about it...and at first I thought it was really dumb and going too far. However, upon further consideration I would certainly enjoy the smidge of screen real estate it would afford me. I would also like the further immersion it could provide to websites without the constant reminder that you are on some site on the internet. I also think that a simple key dedicated to calling the out-of-the-way address bar to attention would be fantastic....like...say...that useless windows key on every keyboard in my house.
Of course I would prefer this be optional and would expect that if I were to hover over a page element I would still get the file name and/or location/url etc.
Though as someone else mentioned I'm a huge fan of Opera because I can make all of this happen already if I want to....and I think that's why it's roughly only me and that guy using Opera.
Sorry but I don't like searching for every single thing when I already know the address. This is just dumb. Far too much emphasis place on searching these days. I rarely need to search anymore as I've been online long enough to basically know where most of the important stuff is.
Just an attempt to generate hits for google here. I dumped Chrome for Firefox the other day for reasons like this. Google controls enough, it's time to take them down a notch. They make some cool stuff but I'm not willing to tie so much into one company.
We at the National Phishing Association greatly support this suggestion.
I understand the drive to minimize the UI in popular applications, but there's a point where it is taken too far. When widgets with intuitive functions start to have extra, magic functionality added on in order to get rid of other widgets, that raises a yellow flag with me. A tab, I get. A text box, I get. A combo tab and text box, hmm, I could get used to it, I guess. But taken too far, I can see UI's being without any chrome at all, and interacting with it becomes a mysterious combination of gestures, control keys, and hovering over the right places. I'm not a fan of that.
Mozilla already has a Labs project that goes even further by hiding ALL the UI and showing it only on demand. It's called Home Dash.
Also, even with a FP, you could at least say something just as inane but a little more on topic, like:
Instead of showing the URL bar all the time, it be hidden within tabs.
"It be hidden? What do we pay the editors for? It is hidden, or it would be hidden or something. Come on, don't we have anyone here who hasn't outsourced their job to Elbonia?"
But thanks for trying. It was a half-assed job that I wouldn't be proud of, but if that's all you have, then frame it and show it to your mother every time she comes into the basement to refill your Cheetos.
Learn to love Alaska
They really need to make Chrome more customizable. I like my browser set up the way I want it. I can do that with Firefox and Opera without any problems. However at this point you can customize IE more than Chrome. I wanted a simple button next to my address bar that gave a drop down bookmarks menu, and there doesn't seem to be any way to properly do that in Chrome, and the addons I've tried all end up trying to be way too fancy, and just don't do a simple drop down bookmarks menu like Firefox.
Between the lack of customizable options, and my paranoia about Google's privacy policies, I have just totally avoided trying to get used to Chrome.
This is going to make phishing fraud worse, when people don't realize they aren't on the website they think they are.
I'm posting from my android device and my browser (dolphin) is some what like that. I know it would have to be adapted to make it work in an desktop browser, but it may work. Let's wait and see.
So basically google is making a version of lynx that will show pictures and text formatting? Oh, wait, even lynx has a basic interface that makes it, what's that word...useful. That's it. Chrome is already too minimal for my tastes. It's ok to have a few buttons up there. Honest.
What's funny is that we're seeing a reverse in computing ability. I remember back when a 14" monitor was standard. When we got those 17" crts(15.75" viewable) we marveled at the screen real estate. Now at work we have either dual 19" or dual 21" monitors. But the trend actually seems to be towards smaller screens. At our school, 99% of the students have laptops or netbooks with the same physical screen size as the crt monitors we trashed almost a decade ago. If you asked us in 2001 if we'd give up a 22" widescreen for a 14" or even 10" screen we'd have laughed you out of the building.
Just give in and make a tablet/netbook version of chrome and a full featured, full interface version for desktops and laptops.
how about "I accidentally the url bar"
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
paypal.c.om
Anyone else find this disturbing, while I know there is a push to merge the web with one way media consumption like radio and tv but this is a bit much IMHO. No it wont hurt those that know better and have some tech savvy but for the masses its basically going to cause people to be led around the internet by the nose. I really dont want to see the internet become a corporate main street while the rest of things get relegated to red light districts and dark alleyways.
Maybe I need a foil hat but it just seems like ideas like the push to get a convergence device is more a push to get rid of the riff-raff (aka indie, amateur and non commercial) content on the internet, its as if the major media groups have recognized they are loosing control of their particular money trains and there is collusion between conglomerates of the past and the conglomerates of today to reduce the risk of the web allowing an equal presence.
Instead of showing the URL bar all the time, it be hidden within tabs.
Arrr! There be nothing wrong with this style of writing, matey!
One thing is for sure: If they drop the URL bar, it will increase the use of search and, thus, increase the click through to ad-words sites. Nothing like a pretty fucking obvious money-making move on their part, eh?
URLs were never meant to be part of the user interface. They were always meant to be hidden.
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You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Honestly, has anybody actually said, "Man I wish I could browse the internet without the URL bar!"? I wasn't happy when Chrome decided to drop the "http://" from the URLs in the URL bar. Perhaps I am a bit OCD, but I like having the protocol specified in the URL. Most browsers don't require you to enter "http://" and assume you mean "http://" if you omit it, but they always display it. I can see a future where we use more protocols for different media and data and the last thing we need to do is to remove the notion of protocols from people's mentalities. The removal of the URL bar is a step too far in dumbing-down the interface. In this day and age of phishing attacks and other scam-related shenanigans, I'd like to see a clear and visible readout of what site I am browsing or what data I am accessing. I know a lot of end-users aren't the brightest bunch, but this is dumbing-down things too far and reeks of a solution in search of a problem ... or is a solution to condition us for some long-term plan Google has to wall us off in their garden.
Thankfully we still have Firefox and Opera as choices and both of those browsers allow customization. Google doesn't seem too keen on allowing customization in Chrome.
I can't use Chrome, because I hate tabs and I want my window management to be handled consistently. Mozilla loves tabs too, but unlike Chrome, they give me the option to easily turn off the features I don't want to use. I can already use Firefox without a URL bar. But the point is, it's left up to me. As long as Chrome doesn't respect my well-justified and not unusual choices, I'll not even consider trying it.
About:blank all the way.
Say it all: http://www.google.com/insights/search/#geo=US&date=1%2F2010%2012m&cmpt=q
F11 kids, use it!
Eliminate the entire window. The browser will run orders of magnitude faster, decrease its memory footprint drastically, and take up absolutely no screen space at all.
Chrome already allows for multiple gmail logins: it's called incognito mode. I assured my girlfriend that's exclusively what I use it for.
Isn't that what F11 is for in firefox? Or just give the user the option. It's a mere UI issue, not like a below the hood engine thing, is it so hard to support two choices in this example?
This sounds good to me, as long as at least part of the URL is visible. There's really no need for the address bar to go all the way across the screen.
This is especially good on netbooks since the vertical resolution is annoyingly low. Though, I recently realized that fullscreen mode in any browser is useful to get that extra bit of vertical screen space - that makes a big difference on some sites!
What we see here is an attempt to maximise screen real estate. This is necessary on today's widescreen laptops and netbooks, but pointless for those who have a large monitor.
For this reason, the UI should be user-configurable.
Just a heads up to the Chrome devs......my monitor is big enough to accommodate the URL bar. There is no need to remove it. Thanks.
Did you actually type "http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/02/20/1817259/Chrome-May-Drop-the-URL-Bar" to get to this page?
Or, did you type "slashdot.org" and follow links? Or click on a bookmark?
URLs are technical information. The advantage of human-readable URLs over IP addresses has faded considerably -- they're only nominally "human readable" once you get past the top level page.
Does it bother you that most workstations don't display their MAC addresses?
Opera 11 does something similar - the URL bar shows, by default, only the main part of the URL and HTTPS statuses with color cues. As soon as you click on it the URL expands fully.
It's really unobtrusive and works great. This is one of my favorite perks of Opera 11, among with tab stacking.
Let's take the article. Roughly 75% of my screen real estate is wasted. About 5% of those 75% is by the browser controls and the rest is white space because I like the majority of people out there have a widescreen monitor. They're not especially well-suited to text (unless you place a bunch of documents next to each other) with either
So why are browsers locked in a fight towards absurd minimalism when there's huge amounts of space to go around. And with more and more screens going for 16:9 instead of 16:10 it's getting worse, not better.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
If you search for the actual source instead of the silly, unsourced article at ConceivablyTech, you'll notice that it talks about Chromium OS, not Chromium (Chrome). So ignore the sensationalism by CT, and go to the actual source.
Clever signature text goes here.
Allowing multiple logins on different tabs is kinda useless now that they already have this.
SIG FAULT: Post index out of bounds.