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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."
I bet phishers will love this feature...
And it still won't stop people doing this: http://hackadaycom.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/toolbars2.png
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.
Did you RTFA? Stacking the tabs at the side is one of the layouts, and the "Address bar hidden in tab" Compact layout is one of four.
Actually I like the idea a lot, it's especially annoying on smaller resolution screens to lose space to something we hardly ever type or read. Sure, it helps people who know what they're looking for against phishing, but such people are unlikely to click on random emails anyhow.
Chrome has been doing a good job pushing browsers forwards, after years of bloat and slowdown, and I'm looking forward to what comes out of this.
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Eh, nowadays people just type what they want in the Google Search bar, remember the Facebook login debacle?
On the other hand, URLs are going back to the AOL keyword origins anyway, look at this domains: http://nyti.ms/, http://flic.kr/, http://youtu.be/ . Yes, they're real. And yes, I hate them.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
You wouldn't believe how many people actually browse that way. I have seen my fair share of people that type URLs in the searchfield of their google homepage.
I used to think it was odd, seeing my supervisor do that at work, when I suggested a site to him which might not necessarily be work related. Some great time later, I realized why he did it that way-- If you type the URL into Google, it doesn't show up in the URL bar's history. This was before private browsing and that sort of thing started showing up, and while he wasn't too concerned about what someone might find if they pulled up the browser history, he didn't necessarily want everywhere he's recently gone to appear if someone just happened to sit down at his desk to use the web.
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