Why should a user see: https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada?utm=asdioasd&arg=j210d... when all they care about is "Wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada"?
Hiding random parts of the address isn't going to make browsing the web better. The main purpose of URLs is for hyperlinks, not as a highly intuitive user interface. Users who don't know how URLs work don't care what is up there. They only care that what they are looking at is what they expect, and a way to get to where they want to go. And that's a complicated problem.
The URL bar hiding thing isn't for users, it's for Google to push Google search. That's why they attempted to remove the URL bar entirely four years ago and replace it with a search bar.
Yet neither company runs a search engine. I don’t suppose it’s possible this is just better for most users?
It's very useful if you don't want to Google internal/client URLs just because you accidentally copied a space at the start or the hostname doesn't resolve in your current environment, etc.
[1]:https://www.techworld.com/download/internet-tools/firefox-63...
Now you can go to menu -> Customize and drag it where you want.
There's still value to be gained from having easily readable urls.
Expecting users to use the URL bar to detect phishing via homoglyphs is insanity.
do not have to be the same website and there are cases where it isn't the same site!
Which site you visit does matter and not just for internet banking. If it becomes that easy if we hide things maybe we should hide the half of the traffic lights as well.
I mean, why should a user see "Wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada" when all they care about is "This is the Wikipedia Page for Canada"?
Mind you, I’m not suggesting to do away with linking, as some rando suggested this implies. (While chrome doesn’t show the protocol prefix, it still copies the prefix when you copy the url, so imagine a similar ui.) But for most users, wouldn’t a ui that shows “server identity” in some more user-coherent way be what they want?
In particular, do subdomains help or hurt phishing detection?
I think we're a long way away from that ideal, though, and some web pages may not be designed with this ideal in mind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/CanadaThe browser could even show specialized UI such as "FR" as a clickable dropdown menu to allow users to switch languages. Chrome already does this for searching a single website through the address bar (type domain.com TAB)
Basically these changes are not thought for you. You are not representative of the average Web user.
Wikipedia FR > Canada
Repeat. This is not sarcasm.
Dark roads ahead, friends.
These aren't decisions for a useragent to make, and there aren't enough browsers out there that people have a reasonable choice.
Bastardising the url isn't a solution to anything, it's a step towards something that Google, not users, want (in making AMP "trivial").
great work
Hiding it just seems like a trivial UI matter that makes things slightly more obnoxious when you do care.
I'd be surprised if only showing the domain vs domain+path made any difference on phishing results.
I don't think these little tricks do much for the user. For example, browsers now highlight https websites with green in the url bar and show a little lock icon. But how is that actionable information for the user? To what extent does that mean you can trust that website, and how does the average person interpret it? Phishing websites use https, too.
I would avoid stealing any pages from Safari's UI. That browser doesn't even show favicons on browser tabs to let you quickly distinguish them.
Except, those same users also don't care about things in the address bar. So the change hurts the group of users that actually do care.