
Google wants to get rid of URLs but doesn’t know what to use instead - badgers
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/09/google-wants-to-get-rid-of-urls-but-doesnt-know-what-to-use-instead/
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ergothus
Let's assume (mostly) good intentions from google. The article mentions that
users don't understand URLs.

Pause to allow a moment to blame users for not trying. Then let's actually
approach the problem constructively instead of blaming users.

As I see it, the URLs contain two parts that matter to the user: the domain
and then everything after that. (Scheme they can either handle or has been
made moot by https everywhere, port is rarely used for the average user, etc)

Domains actually ARE bad for the average user, because they identify a machine
(or machine group) while the user cares about a company/individual identity.
This is why it took 15 years to get people to stop assuming all websites
started with "www". The domain works fine...for techies. It is poor for what
users expect.

As for everything else...the path, query params, and hash are all interpreted
by the end machine. Some sites try to make it human usable (my thanks), but
even those are consistant from one to another. So to Joe or Jane User, these
are meaningless.

It is easy to blame google and even easier to blame users. I love the url and
hate efforts to hide it... but there really are tasks it does a poor job of
that we have no particular good option for.

Rather than blame the url (or these other parties) we should figure out a good
way to address (pun unintended but appreciated) these issues.

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arpgy
I don't know why we would assume mostly good intentions. URLs are a way to
link directly to online data. Without such a direct pointer you would have to
.. I don't know ... 'search'.

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combatentropy
Syntax highlighting is all I think they should do. If they want to color
"http:" red to show that it's insecure, fine, but don't hide it entirely.

In 69, the version that just came out, they have begun to sometimes hide the
subdomain. It threw me for a loop, because someone sent me a link to the
mobile version of Wikipedia:

    
    
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/
    

but the URL bar said just:

    
    
      https://en.wikipedia.org/
    

The page layout was very different, and I wanted to switch to normal. But at
first it looked like I was at the normal URL and maybe Wikipedia had changed
its look and feel overnight.

Thankfully you can disable this in chrome://flags, at "Omnibox UI Hide Steady-
State URL Scheme and Trivial Subdomains." But this still doesn't bring back
"http:"

Firefox too now hides "http:" but you can get it back in about:config, by
setting browser.urlbar.trimURLs to false.

~~~
CompuHacker
Chrome and Firefox developers have been actively pushing the trimURLs concept
for years and will actually fight you about it, claiming that users won't care
or understand.

>
> [https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=41467](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=41467)

Misrepresentation of URLs by default is becoming increasingly common. The URL
doesn't have to fit in the box on every device, and if I don't know what
resource I requested and how I can't troubleshoot my problems.

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pvorb
I believe that getting rid of URLs will further take control away from users
of the web towards search engines, which is likely Google's actual intension
behind these efforts. If you have a full URL that you can write down on paper,
there's still a way to get around the search engine. Once we lose the
technical detail of URLs, that won't work anymore.

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PaulHoule
Is this AMP 2.0?

~~~
jamesgeck0
No. AMP addressed a problem that had been solved for years; we already knew
how to make websites that load quickly. URLs are different; they have issues
that nobody is quite sure how to solve. Any solution Google comes up with that
isn't purely cosmetic won't go very far unless Mozilla, Microsoft, and Apple
agree to implement it.

~~~
touristtam
It's exactly that: an issue of standardization.

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pvorb
URLs might have security issues, but they are one of the main reasons the
internet became such a success.

