Google has tried multiple times for years to dumb down the internet by simplifying Chrome’s “scary” address bar. It first tried to erode the URL entirely by showing just search terms in the omnibox, but its impractical design forced Google to retire it. The developers recently tried to simplify the omibox again — this time hiding all parts of the web address except the domain name. While it received a fair amount of criticism from users, Google defended its decision to move forward, citing its intention to help people better identify malicious sites. But now it seems that Google has reconsidered things, as it recently decided to close the curtains on its experiment.
Good. URLs present important information, and preventing or limiting access to it is simply dumb, and asking for trouble.
While Firefox does the opposite, and 89 version breaks the Web Search bar on a new tab. If you start typing into it, the text appears in the URL address bar… talk about shit design decision…
I wondered what was going on! I even rebooted my computer thinking it was a stupid glitch.
Yeah… did it on Windows and Arch Linux. Debian Sid hasn’t gotten a new version yet as they are in a freeze. Tempted to go back to using the ESR version everywhere.
Weird I’m not seeing that behavior on my windows 10 machine. Haven’t checked linux yet.
Apple also just released the preview version of the next Mac OS and the Safari browser in that version has narrowed down the URL bar.
Yes, but you can still search just the same though. It is a odd design decision for sure. One way to not have that happen is by using the old search box that used come standard in Firefox way back when.
Thank god for that.
Finally.
Yes, there were legitimate reasons.
For example, many users could be duped into clicking apple.com.phishing.scam.com.whatever. However, there are better ways to fight against that.
This is pretty ironic considering that Chrome (Chromium for me) refuses to use web page titles for matching when searching navigation history via the URL bar. This feature has to be manually enabled on the hidden flags section, and even then it didn’t actually work until apparently the last bug fix release just a couple days ago.
I’m not strongly against Google’s idea of hiding it only there aren’t that many good alternatives.
The reason is over 95% of people in the world do not understand what the domain name (or FQDN) is. They know “Google”, “Facebook”, “Microsoft”, etc. that’s it. They have no idea what Microsoft’s primary website domain is. They google for it or whatever their search engine is. Most wouldn’t tell the difference if it weren’t Google but it was Bing or something else.
Over 95% of IT pros do not understand average people as well.
I don’t agree that taking important information away from people helps protect them. Why aren’t they instead highlighting things like root domains so people don’t get fooled into thinking they’re going to or are on apple.com when they are presented with apple.com.gotyousucker.xyz? Don’t hide information, leave it available and in addition, find ways to highlight things for those who don’t know how to identify threats in the information on their own.