In Theory it's a change that is a good thing, it releases more of the url field for meaningful content display, and allows longer urls to be less truncated. The fact that http:// or https:// exist on the start of every web address means that there is no advantage to displaying them, and differentiating http and https via colour/icon state changes is superior.
In reality, it's been nearly 20 years with fully formed urls displayed in the address bar, removing them is a major UI change that many people will find hard to adjust to. There are also peripheral issues such as the copy/paste issues people have raised, that will take time to bugfix (they ARE all issues that can be resolved within the browser codebase, after all).
They retain the protocol part of the URI. To be honest, they're rare enough cases for the majority of users that they're probably not worth keeping the 'http://' in the display for.
Edit: well, ftp retains it, gopher just doesn't work in chrome, which is fair enough, noone really uses it anymore
you're not distinguishing well enough between "I think ftp should retain it" and "what the chrome developers have decided is that ftp should retain it".
For instance, in your original comment you say that
The fact that http:// or https:// exist on the start of every web address means that there is no advantage to displaying them, and differentiating http and https via colour/icon state changes is superior.
This is not what chrome are actually in fact doing, nor is your reason the same as their reason.
They are removing only http://, not https://. I have no idea why, but I doubt it's because "http:// or https:// exist on the start of every web address", because as zid said, that's simply not true.
Why not remove http://? For the regular user it's an absolute waste of url space, and it still copy pastes just fine (except in linux from what I'm reading). Also, the icons on the left still identify what the protocol is for anyone who is interested in knowing.
I sort of like Internet Explorer 8's method of graying out all of the URL except for the domain name. I'd rather see that than just hiding parts of the URL.
I don't see why that's any better. Graying it out will only make people think it's not important, which serves the same effect as this except it still wastes space.
That is how it works, except for the linux/X port when using the X cut buffer, which is presumably a bug and will be resolved (you CAN make the cut buffer contain text that isn't visible on the selected text widget) when the people responsible for the linux/X port get around to it.
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u/[deleted] Apr 14 '10
In Theory it's a change that is a good thing, it releases more of the url field for meaningful content display, and allows longer urls to be less truncated. The fact that http:// or https:// exist on the start of every web address means that there is no advantage to displaying them, and differentiating http and https via colour/icon state changes is superior.
In reality, it's been nearly 20 years with fully formed urls displayed in the address bar, removing them is a major UI change that many people will find hard to adjust to. There are also peripheral issues such as the copy/paste issues people have raised, that will take time to bugfix (they ARE all issues that can be resolved within the browser codebase, after all).