I vociferously oppose removing the URL bar for novice web users.
Because where did the intermediate users come from? They were novice users who somewhere along the way figured out what URLs were. And part of that learning process is having them staring you in the face every day.
Yes they're geeky. But they're also fucking powerful. And the world is better because we have intermediate users who use them. Not developers, but computer savvy, regular people who seriously make good use of URLs.
Hiding them is a terrible idea. Not until we have a replacement that fixes the usability/confusion issues without throwing away the immense power.
I have been using Chrome at work every day since it first came out and Safari at home since it first came out. I long for the day that Safari drops the extra search bar. I am forever typing into the wrong one.
Why have two search boxes when a regular expression can easily and accurately decipher what you are searching for?
Why does having two types of bar add anything but noise to lives of even the most advanced users (of which I include myself)?
The URL bar is a relic akin to the human appendix or tail-bone.
"The location bar has to go. It has many problems. For one, it’s always visible and constantly takes up a large amount of space. Secondly, it’s hard to read, since people don’t really understand URLs. Moreover, it’s modal: it has a mode for displaying the current page’s location and a mode for entering your next destination.”
1. What is the panic with space on monitors? Stop making everything at 1080 widescreen TV.
2. If you cannot read an URL then I guess sending links to others in email, IM, or Facebook is too hard as well. Heck, how are you even going to share the URL? Some kind of drag and drop that people will have to learn even exists?
3. It has more than one mode? Like old TV sets that had a dial to tell you what channel you were on, yet could be set to another channel by turning it? The bar already as been turned into a search, and URL bar. So we already dropped from two entry points to one.
> 2. If you cannot read an URL then I guess sending links to others in email, IM, or Facebook is too hard as well. Heck, how are you even going to share the URL? Some kind of drag and drop that people will have to learn even exists?
First part: Non sequitur.
Second part: A "copy link" function either as a button or a context menu action lets people do exactly what you described. Still no need to see the url all the time.
Firefox still has the search box because it's where the majority of their revenue comes from. I suppose now they'll have a search box but no location bar?
I think "the panic with space on monitors" is driven by the proliferation of smart phones and tablets. You (I assume, from your comment) and I don't have space problems on our desktop screens, but lots of folks (me included) are more frequently using small, portable devices where every pixel counts.
The issue here for me would be the difference between 'removing' and 'turning off by default'. I don't mind if I can turn the bar back on and put it where I like it as I consider it to be an essential item for me. If it's just a case of turning it on then no biggie.
I registered a lot of complaints over the removal of the status bar text at the bottom of FF4, and the fact that I now have to run an add-on to get that functionality back. It could have EASILY been made an optional element, off by default, but dragged back into place via toolbar customization. As long as you maintain the option to restore classic GUI options then altering the defaults for the 'typical user' doesn't bother me much. But don't remove something entirely and go 'So sorry, too bad.' when it would have been easy to maintain the option.
I think requiring an addon is optimal, and I'll explain why.
I see "why can't it just be an option?" a lot. Maintaining an option has a cost. Every option introduced in software creates an additional code path that must be maintained, and must be made to play nice with other features and their options. This can add up rather quickly, especially when options have many subtle interactions with other options. It's not about how easy one option is to maintain, it's about how easy all options are to maintain when we decide to add this one.
In the case of the addon, however, the cost of the option is removed from the main code base and the developers who work in it, and shifted to the addon which is (presumably) maintained by developers who care about the feature. In this way, the cost of the feature is distributed over code and development effort that best serves both the users who care about feature in the addon, and the project's user/developer community as a whole. With the only caveat that the addon api must be sufficient, the addon solution is optimal.
There's a mentality that moving a feature to an addon/plugin/whatever makes it a second-class citizen, but I think in most situations, if executed correctly, it's better than trying to maintain it as an integrated feature.
>removal of the status bar text at the bottom of FF4
Hell yeah, that was stupid. I really hate the new one for many reasons, one of which is that I have to search for it whenever I hover over a link. And whey the hell can't I turn it back on???
As usual, Seamonkey keeps what Firefox changed to stupid.
The possibility to install an add-on is an option to get the classic GUI back - one that doesn't add to the download size of the program and more importantly, that doesn't create noise in the code base. Maintaining one small feature seems easy but they accumulate.
Exactly. In my opinion, one of the worst things a designer can do is have an attitude of "My change is better, deal with it". It presumes that everyone who uses their product will have a use case similar to them, and the people that don't are screwed. When the change made is actually good, designers will get praised for a "bold new vision" and such. When it goes wrong, it pisses off a lot of people, often to the point where they'll switch to a competitor. Think before you remove that option. "Clean design" isn't worth a damn if your product has become less useful as a result.
First they take away the status bar with the lock icon, now they take away the address bar. How the hell am I going to educate my users to make sure they're visiting the correct secure site and not some attack site?
It's as if the UI designers saw a sketch on a cocktail napkin once that really impressed them and now they expect us to use a cocktail napkin for a browser. As if it's all just about inconsequential web surfing and party drinks.
No, no need to care about security or strong site authentication. UI designers have completely failed us in that respect, too, with click-through certificate warnings. This just formalizes it I guess.
Is there any good solution to this? One suggestion I like is adding a secure padlock style icon for traffic over HTTPS, but that doesn't cover every case.
Removing the status bar (now requires an add-on) and the menu bar (now requires tweaking about:config) should have been a warning that the people at ML were operating without a clue, but the removal of the address bar goes far beyond just plain ignorance.
Hrm, as a power user doesn't that mean you are more comfortable customizing, like turning the address bar back on?
Also, eliminating the address bar seems to be a trend among the major browsers, if anything I would expect Firefox to be easier to revert the behavior (see how easy it is to switch back from tabs-on-top, for example).
I understand the sentiment. But to give you an example of the disparity between someone like you and the general public and how clueless they can be; my wife once saw a hash bang in the url bar and ran to me in a panic. She was scared she had gotten some kind of computer virus.
I understand this sentiment, too. But after working without the status bar in Chrome (autohide, I guess) for a while, I got used to it and now actually quite like it. And I think hiding it by default, especially for app tabs, is actually quite nice and I like the idea of having more space for the actual content.
As long as there's an easy way to invoke the url bar, I'll be happy.
Has anyone even considered the security implications of this? The number 1 way to train users against phishing is to tell them to look at the address bar. Once they know what it means (which in my experience takes a minute to explain), they can easily tell that Bancofamericaa.com is not the bank of america.
I'm not sure how many people here are "domainers" but this could very well end up being a nuclear bomb dropped on the web domain industry.
I honestly can't think of all the implications of how this might change how people interact with the web, but what value is a short memorable domain name (ie: "color.com") if browsers are redesigned to eliminate direct type ins?
Perhaps not as big a deal if the location bar is set to auto-hide, and expand on mouse-over ... but it would really be a tragedy for the industry to disappear.
There are a few domainers on here (Ohashi, Michael Cyger, others?) I'd love to hear some of their comments on how they think the domain industry would change.
It isn't really gonna go away, it is just auto-hide or gonna return in a different form. Have a look at the blog posts there are lot of different ideas there. Auto-hide is what the test-extension now does. I actually like it.
As a "vertical screen space nazi" I surely sympathize with the proposal. I always try to customize my software to use as little toolbar space as possible, maximizing the actual content space.
However, suitable alternatives would have to be found for common usage patterns associated with the location bar, in particular I can think of the following:
1. Properly displaying your location relative to the structure of a website.
2. Verifying the security and validity of an address you are visiting.
3. Typing new addresses and search queries.
4. Copying and sharing the location you are in.
I can think of a few UI alternatives for each of those use cases and the article presents some others, many would require a pretty big change on the way we do things on the Web.
This notion that the URL bar is too complicated is just plain poppycock.
I have a feeling most of the folk pushing for this have a vested interest in search. Maybe they are just overly eager UX people trying desperately to put a fingerprint on something.
This honestly feels like another case of Gnome 3, where a group of inexperienced "UX" people want to make a big splash and change things and take away features as part of their "grand vision". If you disagree, you are wrong. If you have alternate suggestions, you will be ignored.
I think it fundamentally arises from the perception they are developing the interface for some kind of idealized idiot/user that doesnt exist. As is usual, software written for "other people" misses the point and just generally sucks.
Not to be too cynical about it, but I'd trust the move a lot more if the two companies leading the charge didn't make all their money off of search ads.
Why are we using a GUI anyway? Instead of using unity to add command line functionality, we should just use a terminal. Not only would commands be easy to add, we can leverage existing ones!
Speaking of saving screen space, images need to go. I estimate we could save 5 pixels per page with this small change.
The major problem with this is that URLs are currently used for one very important thing, for which there is no widespread alternative: showing the "owning entity" of the site you're visiting. In Internet terms, your domain name is your identity - in a very real way, Facebook's identity is "facebook.com" more than it is "Facebook Inc.".
SSL verifies the hostname of the site you're connecting to, so for SSL to be any use at all, the hostname has to be meaningful and visible.
(I do think you could get away with hiding everything but the domain name and/or hostname by default - the signal-to-noise ratio in the rest of the URL is pretty low anyway).
Hmm I'm undecided on this; I can see both sides of the idea but I do wonder whether it will make sense to a newcomer to the web?
Also remember this idea first appeared on Chrome. Chrome is developed by Google. Google is a business, that realistically, has a vested interest in users not understanding urls - it means less direct site hits and hopefully more traffic via Google.
> The location bar has to go. It has many problems. For one, it’s always visible and constantly takes up a large amount of space
Not a problem on my old 4:3 laptop screen but I dread the time when my current laptop dies and I have to deal with one of those 16:9 models.
Right now I have 1400x1050 but in the future I would have to deal with 1440x900 or 1600x900. The height difference is more than the height of the location bar.
A potential side effect of hiding the address bar is that over time web developers may become less motivated to use "clean" human readable URLs (out of sight, out of mind). This could in turn reduce the ability of advanced users to easily understand the link structure of site, and thereby extrapolate the URLs of other pages (something I do regularly).
I like the way Safari does it. The location bar searches history and book marks and has a instant search result popup. The other one does the same for Google or whatever search engine is selected. Both are useful and I always want to search in ONE and exactly one of these, not both.
[+] [-] erikpukinskis|15 years ago|reply
Because where did the intermediate users come from? They were novice users who somewhere along the way figured out what URLs were. And part of that learning process is having them staring you in the face every day.
Yes they're geeky. But they're also fucking powerful. And the world is better because we have intermediate users who use them. Not developers, but computer savvy, regular people who seriously make good use of URLs.
Hiding them is a terrible idea. Not until we have a replacement that fixes the usability/confusion issues without throwing away the immense power.
[+] [-] sambeau|15 years ago|reply
Why have two search boxes when a regular expression can easily and accurately decipher what you are searching for?
Why does having two types of bar add anything but noise to lives of even the most advanced users (of which I include myself)?
The URL bar is a relic akin to the human appendix or tail-bone.
Begone.
[+] [-] coffeedrinker|15 years ago|reply
1. What is the panic with space on monitors? Stop making everything at 1080 widescreen TV.
2. If you cannot read an URL then I guess sending links to others in email, IM, or Facebook is too hard as well. Heck, how are you even going to share the URL? Some kind of drag and drop that people will have to learn even exists?
3. It has more than one mode? Like old TV sets that had a dial to tell you what channel you were on, yet could be set to another channel by turning it? The bar already as been turned into a search, and URL bar. So we already dropped from two entry points to one.
[+] [-] seanalltogether|15 years ago|reply
Seriously, we've been doing ourselves a disservice by optimizing monitors for displaying films when 90% of the time we use them to read text.
[+] [-] VMG|15 years ago|reply
First part: Non sequitur.
Second part: A "copy link" function either as a button or a context menu action lets people do exactly what you described. Still no need to see the url all the time.
[+] [-] MatthewPhillips|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wahnfrieden|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chadgeidel|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 51Cards|15 years ago|reply
I registered a lot of complaints over the removal of the status bar text at the bottom of FF4, and the fact that I now have to run an add-on to get that functionality back. It could have EASILY been made an optional element, off by default, but dragged back into place via toolbar customization. As long as you maintain the option to restore classic GUI options then altering the defaults for the 'typical user' doesn't bother me much. But don't remove something entirely and go 'So sorry, too bad.' when it would have been easy to maintain the option.
[+] [-] jpk|15 years ago|reply
I see "why can't it just be an option?" a lot. Maintaining an option has a cost. Every option introduced in software creates an additional code path that must be maintained, and must be made to play nice with other features and their options. This can add up rather quickly, especially when options have many subtle interactions with other options. It's not about how easy one option is to maintain, it's about how easy all options are to maintain when we decide to add this one.
In the case of the addon, however, the cost of the option is removed from the main code base and the developers who work in it, and shifted to the addon which is (presumably) maintained by developers who care about the feature. In this way, the cost of the feature is distributed over code and development effort that best serves both the users who care about feature in the addon, and the project's user/developer community as a whole. With the only caveat that the addon api must be sufficient, the addon solution is optimal.
There's a mentality that moving a feature to an addon/plugin/whatever makes it a second-class citizen, but I think in most situations, if executed correctly, it's better than trying to maintain it as an integrated feature.
[+] [-] StuffMaster|15 years ago|reply
Hell yeah, that was stupid. I really hate the new one for many reasons, one of which is that I have to search for it whenever I hover over a link. And whey the hell can't I turn it back on???
As usual, Seamonkey keeps what Firefox changed to stupid.
[+] [-] kristiandupont|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jokermatt999|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gbrindisi|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marshray|15 years ago|reply
It's as if the UI designers saw a sketch on a cocktail napkin once that really impressed them and now they expect us to use a cocktail napkin for a browser. As if it's all just about inconsequential web surfing and party drinks.
No, no need to care about security or strong site authentication. UI designers have completely failed us in that respect, too, with click-through certificate warnings. This just formalizes it I guess.
[+] [-] jokermatt999|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jerhewet|15 years ago|reply
Removing the status bar (now requires an add-on) and the menu bar (now requires tweaking about:config) should have been a warning that the people at ML were operating without a clue, but the removal of the address bar goes far beyond just plain ignorance.
[+] [-] pkamb|15 years ago|reply
Bravo to Microsoft Office, Chrome, Firefox, etc. for abandoning the menu bar entirely in their new versions.
[+] [-] wmeredith|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhelmer|15 years ago|reply
Also, eliminating the address bar seems to be a trend among the major browsers, if anything I would expect Firefox to be easier to revert the behavior (see how easy it is to switch back from tabs-on-top, for example).
[+] [-] pepsi_can|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joebadmo|15 years ago|reply
As long as there's an easy way to invoke the url bar, I'll be happy.
[+] [-] StuffMaster|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] makmanalp|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlexC04|15 years ago|reply
I honestly can't think of all the implications of how this might change how people interact with the web, but what value is a short memorable domain name (ie: "color.com") if browsers are redesigned to eliminate direct type ins?
Perhaps not as big a deal if the location bar is set to auto-hide, and expand on mouse-over ... but it would really be a tragedy for the industry to disappear.
There are a few domainers on here (Ohashi, Michael Cyger, others?) I'd love to hear some of their comments on how they think the domain industry would change.
[+] [-] hollerith|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Lennie|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lmarinho|15 years ago|reply
However, suitable alternatives would have to be found for common usage patterns associated with the location bar, in particular I can think of the following:
1. Properly displaying your location relative to the structure of a website.
2. Verifying the security and validity of an address you are visiting.
3. Typing new addresses and search queries.
4. Copying and sharing the location you are in.
I can think of a few UI alternatives for each of those use cases and the article presents some others, many would require a pretty big change on the way we do things on the Web.
[+] [-] xl-brain|15 years ago|reply
I have a feeling most of the folk pushing for this have a vested interest in search. Maybe they are just overly eager UX people trying desperately to put a fingerprint on something.
[+] [-] throwaway32|15 years ago|reply
I think it fundamentally arises from the perception they are developing the interface for some kind of idealized idiot/user that doesnt exist. As is usual, software written for "other people" misses the point and just generally sucks.
[+] [-] jerhewet|15 years ago|reply
[touches tip of index finger to his nose]
[+] [-] Kylekramer|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Yxven|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] caf|15 years ago|reply
SSL verifies the hostname of the site you're connecting to, so for SSL to be any use at all, the hostname has to be meaningful and visible.
(I do think you could get away with hiding everything but the domain name and/or hostname by default - the signal-to-noise ratio in the rest of the URL is pretty low anyway).
[+] [-] kule|15 years ago|reply
Also remember this idea first appeared on Chrome. Chrome is developed by Google. Google is a business, that realistically, has a vested interest in users not understanding urls - it means less direct site hits and hopefully more traffic via Google.
[+] [-] Lennie|15 years ago|reply
It is visible when first loaded and when you change tabs, etc.
I think it is pretty easy to find.
[+] [-] uast23|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asadotzler|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phillijw|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] janjan|15 years ago|reply
Not a problem on my old 4:3 laptop screen but I dread the time when my current laptop dies and I have to deal with one of those 16:9 models.
Right now I have 1400x1050 but in the future I would have to deal with 1440x900 or 1600x900. The height difference is more than the height of the location bar.
[+] [-] eropple|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hinchley|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewflnr|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bugsy|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kujawa|15 years ago|reply