"I don’t know what this will look like, because it’s an active discussion in the team right now," says Parisa Tabriz, director of engineering at Chrome. "But I do know that whatever we propose is going to be controversial. That’s one of the challenges with a really old and open and sprawling platform. Change will be controversial whatever form it takes. But it’s important we do something, because everyone is unsatisfied by URLs. They kind of suck."
She's says it's important that they do something! GTFOH! Hands of our Internet!
The problem here is that they view Chrome as their platform. They have too much market share ala IE6. Instead of following and helping to shape standards, they are considering highjacking the project. Argh!!!!!
+1 Why do they need to change anything? Of course it’s going to be « controversial »!! What happened to RFQs?
Hidding the url scheme was the first step down this path of utter stupidity and I vividly remember the hostility and hubris of the Chrome team at the time.
We still have Firefox, but many times they just blindly follow suit.
It is worse than that for some users. I've seen actual users that type/paste real url's into google's search box in order to go to the site. They actually had no idea that the bar at the top of the browser that said "google" (since they/someone set their default homepage to google) was a place where they could delete "google.com" and type/paste the url they wanted to visit there instead to actually get to the site they wanted to visit.
You seem shocked at this with word usage like "actual users", "real url's" and "actually no idea"
But how are we to expect users to know any better until general technology literacy improves?
Many people can't tell you the difference between a modem, router, OS, browser, or website.
I remember years ago sitting down with my elderly grandmother trying to show her how to use a desktop...
We are too close to our work so everything is familiar and easy.
Even the concept of moving the mouse on a table to represent moving the mouse cursor on the screen is something we take for granted.
Tell someone who's never used a mouse before to double click something to open it. You have to start way back earlier at the concept of which physical button on the mouse to use.
This turned more into a general rant about how we overestimate regular users but I'ts been on my mind for awhile.
> "Many people can't tell you the difference between a modem, router, OS, browser, or website."
They don't care, nor should they. How many people know how many spark plugs are in their car?
You're correct. We, the more tech-literate, take too much for granted; and most experiences and learning curves are too far over the head of the "average" user.
It's not about knowing how many spark plugs are in their car. It's more about buying a car that comes with a custom power adapter plugged into the cigarette lighter, never realizing that you can plug your own accessories into the cigarette lighter instead of buying your phone charger or GPS from the car company, and then not caring when they just take away the cigarette lighter and replace it with their own custom port.
Since we know all analogies breakdown under close inspection, I'm pushing the idea that the best analogy is actually a brief description of the event / idea itself.
So in this case:
Not display www. in the address bar is actually a whole lot like not display www. in the address bar.
The benefit is obvious in that instance. There is a very direct connection between checking your mirrors and not hitting a car as you merge or similar.
Where is the cause and effect for a URL or SSL cert? There is no learning experience.
Furthermore as some have claimed, and I've personally witnessed, for some URLS's literally dont exist. Just type whatever site you want into the google box and hope you get lucky.
I think the spark plugs example is an excellent one. People used to require an extensive knowledge of how cars worked in order to have a prayer of using them effectively. Now they don't, because we realized none of that knowledge is necessary if you design the system correctly.
We have enough historical context to realize that things like parsing URLs by eye is unsafe for the general population, and always will be. The solution is to engineer that need out of existence.
You might want to consider that manufacturers have added blind spot detectors to cars as people are bad at changing lanes safely, even with all the training in the world.
Do you seriously not know how many spark plugs are in your car? It's the same as the number of cylinders. How could you not know that?
They absolutely should care. They should be aware that when they store things in "the cloud" they are not stored on their device and are visible to third parties. They should understand what encryption is and how to use it. "I don't know what I'm doing, and I didn't get the result I wanted, but it's not my fault it's the machine" is not an acceptable statement, whether we're talking about cars or computers.
I'm occasionally doing that and especially suggest non-technical users to do exactly this thing. I can mistype URL. Google will correct me, if site is well-known. Otherwise I'm risking to go to phishing website.
I just finished helping out a friend who did exactly this thing, clicked on an ad at the results page thinking it was Google's top result and was redirected to an ESTA scam site where they lost a bunch of money.
What's easier to tell apart for nontechnical users? URL bar from Google search field or ads from Google results?
"I don’t know what this will look like, because it’s an active discussion in the team right now," says Parisa Tabriz, director of engineering at Chrome. "But I do know that whatever we propose is going to be controversial. That’s one of the challenges with a really old and open and sprawling platform. Change will be controversial whatever form it takes. But it’s important we do something, because everyone is unsatisfied by URLs. They kind of suck."
https://www.wired.com/story/google-wants-to-kill-the-url/
She's says it's important that they do something! GTFOH! Hands of our Internet!
The problem here is that they view Chrome as their platform. They have too much market share ala IE6. Instead of following and helping to shape standards, they are considering highjacking the project. Argh!!!!!