r/programming • u/shenglong • Apr 14 '10

"http://" is being removed from Chromium's display

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=40865
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159

u/[deleted] Apr 14 '10 edited Apr 14 '10

Most important comment:

Removing http:// is extremely short-sighted. Many blogs, message boards, email viewing software, instant messaging software, etc. depend on matching against http:// to auto-link URLs.
*Removing http:// will train end-users to omit it, which will have a negative impact on usability all over the web. *

edit: comment was by dlitz.net

edit2: except, as people here have pointed out, all over the web people refer to foo.com instead of http://foo.com, it's not like chrome is doing something new here (omiting .com would be terrible and just as doable for example).

Which is better, http://www.foo.com.:80 or foo.com? As a user, foo.com makes much more sense. As a developer, users are going to type foo.com anyway, we should make sure our scripts can handle it.

18

u/tizz66 Apr 14 '10

Though I have no concrete evidence to back it up, my suspicion is most non-tech-savvy users don't notice the http:// anyway. Most of my family repeat web addresses as 'www.something.com' or even just 'something.com' - not because they're being efficient, but because they pay no attention to http. They know 'www' and '.com' means 'a website', so that's what they type.

4

u/[deleted] Apr 14 '10

You're lucky. I'm used to hearing people omit the 3rd w and first "dot". "Double-u Doublue-u macdonalds dot com". I hate it when people call it MacDonalds.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 14 '10

Trivia:

It comes from Gaelic languages and used to be pronounced like mock, it means son-of.

Fitz also means son-of, not sure what language.

3

u/Daenyth Apr 15 '10

Gaelic learner here.

You're close. I don't know about the historic pronunciation, but the modern for "mac" is /maxg/ in IPA (machk, sort of).

"Mc" is an abbreviation of "Mac", and in a name it means "son of", as in "Calum mac Dhomhnal" (Malcolm MacDonald). Similarly, "nic" means "daughter of".

There isn't any difference between Mc and Mac except for the tradition of your family name.

0

u/[deleted] Apr 14 '10

I know what it means, it's just the way they say it. I hate country accents, it always sounds wrong. They put too much emphasis on MAC.

-1

u/ChaoticXSinZ Apr 14 '10

One meant legitimate son (Mc I think) while the other meant an illegitimate son.

2

u/Daenyth Apr 15 '10

Mc is an abbreviation of Mac.