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Could Google's Test of Hiding Complete URLs In Chrome Become a Standard?

Posted by timothy on from the dumbed-down-or-neatened-up? dept.

MojoKid (1002251) writes "The address bar in a Web browser has been a standard feature for as long as Web browsers have been around — and that's not going to be changing. What could be, though, is exactly what sort of information is displayed in them. In December, Google began rolling-out a limited test of a feature in Chrome called "Origin Chip", a UI element situated to the left of the address bar. What this "chip" does is show the name of the website you're currently on, while also showing the base URL. To the right, the actual address bar shows nothing, except a prompt to "Search Google or type URL". With this implementation, a descriptive URL would not be seen in the URL bar. Instead, only the root domain would be seen, but to the left of the actual address bar. This effectively means that no matter which page you're on in a given website, all you'll ever see when looking at the address bar is the base URL in the origin chip. What helps here is that the URL is never going to be completely hidden. You'll still be able to hit Ctrl + L to select it, and hopefully be able to click on the origin chip in order to reveal the entire URL. Google could never get rid of the URL entirely, because it's required in order to link someone to a direct location, obviously."

44 of 327 comments (clear)

  1. And the question of the day is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why? It's easier, more informative, more transparent, and arguably better just to show a plain old URL field than add some extra layer of crap to 'hide' it and make it less useful...

    1. Re:And the question of the day is... by VortexCortex · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yep, and when you click the field to give it focus have it highlight the whole thing so that you can start typing your search or Ctrl+C or Ctrl+V to copy or paste the damn link. I've been compiling my own Firefox for so long I had forgotten that this wasn't a standard feature. Sure beats triple clicking the URL to select it.

    2. Re:And the question of the day is... by cryptizard · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The benefit is ease of use for people who have no idea what a URL is. They just look up there and see, "yes, this is definitely my bank's website," instead of "holy shit what does long string of symbols that mean."

    3. Re:And the question of the day is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Software is art. It's primary purpose is aesthetic appeal. The age of dorky nerds running computerland is over -- computers are beautiful things for beautiful people. If you are an ugly person and refuse to embrace the lovingly crafted minimalistic design choices of the brilliant UX designers, then feel free to go back to Netscape 6.

    4. Re:And the question of the day is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So do what Firefox does (or did I guess I should say. Isn't doing it for me anymore).

      Put the domain in solid black, and everything else in a light gray.

    5. Re:And the question of the day is... by epyT-R · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Deliberately hiding details because they confuse people is not a solid reason for turning everything into its fisher price equivalent.

    6. Re:And the question of the day is... by russotto · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Software is art. It's primary purpose is aesthetic appeal. The age of dorky nerds running computerland is over -- computers are beautiful things for beautiful people. If you are an ugly person and refuse to embrace the lovingly crafted minimalistic design choices of the brilliant UX designers, then feel free to go back to Netscape 6.

      Goddammit, Poe's Law!

    7. Re:And the question of the day is... by epyT-R · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Too bad you're probably right. It explains why software is getting less useful and more user hostile. Those 'beautiful people' are suckers.

    8. Re:And the question of the day is... by ArcadeMan · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Put the domain in solid black, and everything else in a light gray.

      Safari 7 already does this.

      It helps the dumb users AND it doesn't punish the users who understand technology.

      Google are slowly turning into the old version of Microsoft.

      --
      Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
    9. Re:And the question of the day is... by irtza · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If the target audience of your browser is a half step or less from computer illiterate, you need to take steps to protect them from themselves. This means that the others will have to find another toy to play with because google has decided that the more literate crowd is not as valuable as customers or feels that they will just adapt, complain and move along because they have little other choice.

      --
      When all else fails, try.
    10. Re:And the question of the day is... by bloodhawk · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What ease of use? it provides them with no more knowledge and doesn't make a web page any easier to use, if they don't understand a URL they are already not typing it or touching it. Hiding it just ensures further ignorance for no benefit.

    11. Re:And the question of the day is... by mysidia · · Score: 2

      This is all well and good until you have http://legit.example.com/viewurl.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmalicious.example.com

    12. Re:And the question of the day is... by Ksevio · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yes it is. Most information in the rest of the URL is fairly useless. Take the url of this story:
      http:/ /tech. slashdot.org /story /14/05/03 /007209 /could-googles-test-of-hiding-complete-urls-in-chrome-become-a-standard
      We've got the protocol, which no one cares about (encryption status needs more information than just https), "tech" which means we're in the technology section (though no functional difference really), the site we're on "slashdot.org", "story" which is useless, a date which is useless (on the page), a story id, which no one cares about, and finally the title of the article, which is also useless (on the page and the window name).

      All that information can be found on the web page we're looking at (except the story id). All that really matters is that this is slashdot.org, and even that isn't all that important.

      With the rise of ajax, the address bar is becoming less and less needed. Half the time it has a bunch of session id info mixed in or other random ids. It's not something that the user is suppose to be looking at in most cases, the only real use is to when copying it to be able to get back to the same place.

    13. Re:And the question of the day is... by epyT-R · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Targeting the lowest common denominator is what breeds the next generation of better idiots who can't even figure out your already dumbed down design. At some point, "this far, no farther" should rule the day.

    14. Re:And the question of the day is... by epyT-R · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Granted, but having access still has utility.

      1. having a reference url that can be shared by im, irc, game chat, socialmedia, etc with simple copy and paste is valuable. This is still quite valid and is reason enough for keeping it visible and accessible.
      2. the ability to navigate bad websites when they fail (eg they break the back button purposely) but you really need the information they contain.
      3. There are still sites out there that use static urls.. it's just that google and facebook don't, so everyone now assumes no one does.
      4. Being able to see fishing urls for what they really are, though this is more useful as a cursor hover in the statusbar, which is another thing the web 2.0 generation is scrambling to get rid of.

    15. Re:And the question of the day is... by Mastax · · Score: 2

      http://commons.wikimedia.org/w... Google Chrome Beta 1 ca. 2008. Notice how the URL appears.

    16. Re:And the question of the day is... by Blaskowicz · · Score: 4, Informative

      If the URL is automatically highlighted that makes it even more easy to lose the content of your middle click paste buffer.
      I've just seen Alt-D / Ctrl-L does that. Bummer. Best is to have a little button to clear the URL bar if that's what you want to do, I had a Firefox extension provide it and it's one of the few features included in dillo.

      Or you can click at the end of the URL, press shift-home to select it all, press delete, type stuff. It still hijacks the middle mouse buffer. So the single clicking and using arrows and delete/backspace is needed as the only method that will preserve it, and that's sometimes useful if you wanted to paste the second half of a URL, after the domain name.

    17. Re:And the question of the day is... by epyT-R · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This is how things were already circa 1995-2001.. Then everyone got on this "make the web 'accessible'" mantra, so it's being dumbed down to 'hoodrat' level.

    18. Re:And the question of the day is... by Blaskowicz · · Score: 2

      There a trend to have the browser window not render the window's title bar. Firefox and Chrome do that by default at least on Windows, as well as MS Internet Explorer.
      So a descriptive name in the URL can be a workaround for that. I do have a title bar that displays the full title, but my tab says "Coul...". I do think the descriptive URL is a good trend as well. It's better than "http://slashdot.org/0edc7435b234afbc23098cda148994e".

    19. Re:And the question of the day is... by CODiNE · · Score: 2

      But it's good business for Google to increase user reliance on searching.

      --
      Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
    20. Re:And the question of the day is... by smash · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I get protecting people from themselves, but what the fuck is a visible URL going to do to them? They can't break anything by SEEING it.

      --
      I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
    21. Re:And the question of the day is... by firewrought · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The benefit is ease of use for people who have no idea what a URL is. They just look up there and see, "yes, this is definitely my bank's website," instead of "holy shit what does long string of symbols that mean."

      Maybe a basic part of web literacy is learning what a URL is and what it's useful for. "Whoa!" you say, "we need to do anything we can to make computers easier and more self-explanatory." Well, yes, I agree with that, but we're reaching a point where designers start to "overtrain" their design. Take this "origin chip", for example. You make it slightly easier to identify the site you're on and perhaps slightly less intimidating for a newbie [which is sort of ridiculous in this context because the web is do damn ubiquitous now], but you've also made a host of other tasks slightly harder (viz., copying/emailing a link, fixing a link, manually entering a link, inspecting a link, etc.). In addition, you're no longer subtly informing the intuitions of future authors, librarians, technicians, webmasters, programmers, and judges/juries as to the URL~=page association. That's ultimately making it harder for people to understand how their technology works.

      Usability design is a noble endeavor, and I'm all on board with Norman, Tufte, etc. What I'm NOT on board is the current fad of software that drops functionality, removes technical visibility, and overhauls the interface with each release. That's just user-hostile.

      [ranting because Google Camera dropped exposure control recently]

      --
      -1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
    22. Re:And the question of the day is... by fnj · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Bullshit. You don't punish normally competent users for being normally competent and encourage illiterate morons to be illiterate morons. There is nothing about an URL that is the least bit confusing or hard to describe. "The part after the first colon and double slash, up to the next slash, is the site. The rest helps you find your place within the site." How hard is that? You would have to be at death's door from dehydration due to uncontrollable drooling not to grasp that.

      Stop pretending people are stupider than they are, and stop encouraging them to be stupid. Just stop.

    23. Re:And the question of the day is... by epyT-R · · Score: 2

      The key detail is what is defined as 'relevant'.

    24. Re:And the question of the day is... by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Interesting

      ht tp://passwordreset.bankofamerica.com.0.34234.com/?=customerpasswordreset&34234

      Now show that to your mother and ask her if this is the correct site to reset her bank of America password. Next try and explain to her why, and then come back and tell us how hard it is to grasp.

    25. Re:And the question of the day is... by TheRealHocusLocus · · Score: 5, Funny

      Deliberately hiding details because they confuse people is not a solid reason for turning everything into its fisher price equivalent.

      Hah. The other day a friend showed me his Android phone. The screen was black, in the middle there was this dumb looking LEGO robot lying on its back, something like this. "You're the computer whiz. What does this mean?" I looked at it for a moment, jabbed my finger repeatedly on the unresponsive little screen that has no buttons like a bird bumping against a window.

      Then I said,

      "It appears that clever engineers have managed to make a full color megapixel display that is capable of showing a whole chapter of text say absolutely NOTHING. The machine knows something is wrong, that's why it retrieved the image and is showing it. It knows what it was trying to do, what did not work as expected. There are details and helpful hints inside, but they decided that you wanted to see this dumb robot instead. These people are messing with your mind. They think you are stupid. They think you are easily confused and need to see a picture of a robot and a red triangle when something goes wrong. They don't trust you with details. They don't think you can handle the truth. And you know what? When you call them the person you speak to will probably not know any more than I do, they'll tell you to push some secret reset button and hope for the best. Well here's what you have to do. But does it show a diagram indicating where the reset button is? No, you're supposed to look at a dead robot carcass instead. Because you're nothing to them.

      You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

      While I was saying all of this, the robot disappeared and the phone rebooted.

      People don't ask me for computer help much any more.

      --
      <blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
    26. Re:And the question of the day is... by TheRealHocusLocus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What ease of use? it provides them with no more knowledge and doesn't make a web page any easier to use, if they don't understand a URL they are already not typing it or touching it. Hiding it just ensures further ignorance for no benefit.

      Hah. Like Microsoft deciding that file name dot-extensions were the devil's workshop and must be hidden from view by default. So people did not learn them, and became vulnerable to whole new classes of malware attack and needless confusion, especially when sharing files.

      Whenever I set up a new Windows showing file extensions and showing full path in address bar was the first change I'd make. Turn on URL address bars (some OEMs turned them off!), status lines, full detail everything. And people learned how their folders were organized and how to recognize malevolent attachments because I'd tell them they should learn extensions and look out for weird names, only the last one counts. When they reinstalled Windows they'd call and say "Hey! Windows is screwed up, I'm not seeing the full file name." Now they were savvy enough I could tell them where to find those options over the phone. They demanded full disclosure, nothing less.

      And thus, the great circle of nerd is complete.

      --
      <blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
    27. Re:And the question of the day is... by martin-boundary · · Score: 5, Informative

      They can't break anything by SEEING it.

      Yes they CAN. For example, by SEEING the actual URL redirects that Google uses to track everyone's moves(*), people might wake up and PROTEST, or worse, STOP using Google's spyware.

      Hiding information breeds ignorance, and ignorance leads to exploitation. When companies want to hide information, it's usually for their own benefit. Google is no exception.

      (*) don't believe me? Next time you're browsing the search results returned from Google, look at the source for the links. It LOOKS like you're clicking on a legitimate url, but in actual fact you're clicking on a Google spy link, that FIRST talks to google servers so they can track what you're doing, and THEN sends your browser to the place you thought you were going.

    28. Re:And the question of the day is... by Simulant · · Score: 2

      Absolutely. For example Microsoft's misguided decisions to do things like hide file extensions by default and obscure the way files are organized with with My Documents, symlinks, and .ini files which hide true directory names have been counter productive in my experience. These decisions only serve to assist a limited subset of users who never venture beyond routine computer use and totally screws them over when they do.

    29. Re:And the question of the day is... by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 2

      So, is this really going to help. Because the person who cannot figure out that "passwordreset.3465.blah.bankofamerica.com/?=customerpasswordreset&34234" is different from "passwordreset.3465.blah.bankofamerica.co/?=customerpasswordreset&34234" is not going to figure out that "bankofamerica.com" is different from "bankofamerica.co" and is likely to overlook that "bankofametica.com" is yet a different site. This is a problem which can only be fixed by training.

      --
      The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
    30. Re:And the question of the day is... by Ksevio · · Score: 2

      Those things should still be possible. I know in Opera, the domain is shown in black, the page in gray, and the query string is hidden, but when you click on the address bad, it gives you the whole URL.

      Most "bad" websites that break things you often can't use the address bar anyways since it's either not pointed to the right page, they have a weird file structure, or the page has changed it.

  2. Nope. by X0563511 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What, do they want Chrome to be the next AOL?

    No. Show the URL. Start trimming that down and next thing you know we'll be back with keywords...

    --
    For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
  3. Re:Immediately Hostile by ComputersKai · · Score: 2

    But you can't see much that is going on with the true URL obfuscated.

    iOS 7's Safari currently hides the true URL, and you would not believe how annoying it is for me to use it.

  4. Re:Immediately Hostile by VortexCortex · · Score: 2

    People prone to fishing don't look at URL bars enough for that to matter.

  5. Amateurs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Couldn't they just output the SHA-512 of the URL and be done with it?

  6. Please try harder. by csirac · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There's obvious ways to shoot for the phishing mitigations that this is apparently seeking to achieve, without turning the web into an app store. We used to make fun of stupid flash sites due to lack of linkability, is it really necessary to so thoroughly lunge off the cliff into this idiocy now?

    I wonder how many bad guys are already thinking of ways to exploit this. Yes the domain is more prominent, that should have been fixed years ago - but how many sites out there are completely free of XSS vulnerabilites? When this eventually becomes non-optional, how am I going to spot https://mybank.foo/?q="><script>evil; stuff;</script>

    ?

    The perfect irony of course is that Google's own pagerank depends on cross-site linking... By robbing people of URLs, a future generation of net users will grow up never knowing how to share a page with their friends unless there's a sharing mechanism within the same site their friends already use.

  7. Re:Immediately Hostile by epyT-R · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That doesn't mean you take the opportunity for learning away for the sake of some stupid hipster aesthetic.

  8. All part of the plan. by SeaFox · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Google could never get rid of the URL entirely, because it's required in order to link someone to a direct location, obviously.

    Google doesn't want people to go to a website directly on their own. They want folks to search for it with Google, obviously.

    1. Re:All part of the plan. by msobkow · · Score: 2

      I already know many people who do just that.

      Type "cbc.ca" in the address bar? Screw that, they type CBC in their Google home page, wait for the search, then click on the cbc.ca link that comes up. Bass ackwards way of using the 'net in my book, but it works for them.

      --
      I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
    2. Re:All part of the plan. by tero · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A lot of browsers are to blame for this. Both Chrome and Firefox place a big search bar in the middle of the screen and put it in auto-focus as soon as the browser starts.

      Firefox gets most of its funding that way (ironically from Google) and Google gets to harvest our searches in both cases.

      It's a browser UI issue, not a user issue.

  9. Re:Easy by PPH · · Score: 2

    It certainly makes sense for them to be the same field,

    Huh? Search is the box in the middle of the page I get when I go to http://www.google.com/. The location field is what I type or paste an explicit URL into. If my location field starts second-guessing what I'm typing like the Google search field does, I'm getting a new browser.

    Hacking Google and directing them to alternate sites based on autocomplete is at least a nuisance and possibly a security risk if people don't pay attention.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  10. AOL keywords by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    All part of corporate strategy to turn the internet into television 2.0.

    Must not happen.

  11. obviously to promote search by BroadbandBradley · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If you don't have the URL but you have the name of the site and what the page is about " an article on CNN about blah blah" , how would you find it? SEARCH! And perhaps you'd encounter a useful advertisement for blah blah on your way to CNN.

    Nice move. No more links, only Google.

    --
    "The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
  12. I also hate hiding full email addresses by walterbyrd · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Lots of email clients do this. This creates many problems, and does not do any good what-so-ever.