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by usrbinbash 953 days ago
People without a technical background could accept a browser that doesn't display an URL at all. Just put a nice big Button with the Google-Logo somewhere, which for many people is "The internet" and they are happy.

And anyone claiming otherwise should riddle me this: How do most non-technical people in the world access "awesomepageireallylike.something"? That's right, they click into the address bar, start typing until the string they remebered appears, and then click on that. And what is that? Exactly: A Google search.
2 comments
avodonosov 953 days ago
URL is a central concept in web browsing. Hiding it from users goes against the main usability principle that the user should understand what's going on.

One does not need a technical background to understand URLs.

Browser hiding URLs is like an OS hiding file system structure from users, because files and directories are "too technioal" for them.

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usrbinbash 953 days ago
> that the user should understand what's going on

Sure he should. But design maxime of a lot of contemporary software does exactly the opposite: Hiding as much of the "icky techy stuff" from the user as possible.

> One does not need a technical background to understand URLs.

That's true, but doesn't change the fact that most people don't. For example, how many people know that the domain of an URL is organised right-to-left? I met people in tech, including programmers, who never figured that out.

> Browser hiding URLs is like an OS hiding file system structure from users, because files and directories are "too technioal" for them.

I agree. And now open a contemporary smart phone interface, and show me, without any special tooling, the actual, "physical" file system. And these things are probably the most successful consumer computing platforms ever.

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avodonosov 953 days ago
> And now open a contemporary smart phone interface, and show me, without any special tooling, the actual, "physical" file system.

Yes, I had phones in mind when writting the above :)

> And these things are probably the most successful consumer computing platforms ever.

Users don't have better choice in this market.

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IlliOnato 953 days ago
Why do you think Apple and Google hide the file system in their mobile OSes? Just for fun?..
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avodonosov 950 days ago
I could name several hypotheses, but I don't know exactly.

What I am certain of, is that it's very inconvenient to not have access to file systems.

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cxr 953 days ago
I don't think that takes like this one that yes-and URLs as a narrowly technological concern help anything. I'd argue it actually does more harm than good.

> URL is a central concept in web browsing.

Two responses, depending on one's mood:

1. So?

2. Resource identifiers—which URLs are—are a central concept to information science, scholarship, and society and culture.

Aside from the (admittedly often irrational) tendency of some non-technical people to strike a pose of helplessness,* you also end up with technical people making comments like this one: generally taking the stance that it's not too hard to pick this stuff up, with the goal that non-technical people will end up with an appreciation/conception of a URL's technological bones that at least approximately matches the informed mental model of the technical person who is speaking—and who themselves doesn't stop to consider what they themselves have got wrong and are possibly continuing to do wrong by society wrt their role in (negatively) shaping the information architecture of the world around them.

* See <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38277553>

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hk__2 953 days ago
IPs are a central concept as well but nobody advocates for making them more visible (and colorized, etc) to users.

> Hiding it from users goes against the main usability principle that the user should understand what's going on.

The main usability principle is that the user should understand what matters for them. Seeing the path of the URL is completely useless to 99% of web browsing. Better hide it by default and let power users see it if they want.

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alanbernstein 953 days ago
> Browser hiding URLs is like an OS hiding file system structure from users, because files and directories are "too technioal" for them.

Yes, well, this is how mobile OSs behave and most people don't seem to care or even notice...

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zestyping 952 days ago
Sharing URLs is a fundamental operation.

Without a URL, you can't text someone a webpage, refer to it in a social media post or a tweet, or link to it in a document. You can't make links.

Sure, you can browse the web without it. But you can't use any of our everyday basic tools for sharing and content creation without it.

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