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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."

11 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 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.

    4. 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.

    5. 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
    6. 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>
    7. 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.

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

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

  4. 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.