The most recent developer version of Google’s Chrome browser has introduced a quiet, but significant change. The common “http://” is gone and websites are displayed in the simplified structure of “www.conceivablytech.com” instead. The move is already sparking a heated discussion: How do you clearly differentiate between different types of websites – and more importantly, how do you clearly visualize that your visitors are on a secure https web page?
We have learned that Google likes things simple. Why overcomplicate your day if there is an easier way? We have seen this with the original Google search engine interface and products all the way up to the Chrome web browser. There isn’t much in your view you don’t need and you should not have to worry about.
Now Google is making a careful step to simplify the display of web addresses, commonly referred to URLs. The Chrome developer version 5.0375.9 does not show the prefix of the address (http://) anymore. Instead of showing the address http://www.conceivablytech.com, Chrome displays www.conceivablytech.com. Google already has addressed the issue, stating that it is a feature, not a bug. The prefix in fast is still there, but invisible: If you copy the URL from the URL bar into notepad, for example, you will still see the http:// prefix.
Google’s decision to drop the prefix seems to be common sense. Do you really pay attention to the prefix? Who, among the mainstream web users, ever cared about the prefix and knew what it stands for? Isn’t is just confusing and isn’t it much easier to just get rid of it? Some may argue, you can just get rid of it, but then you could also drop the “www” preceding the actual domain name (which is already done, by the way: If you are using a blog such as WordPress, the default setting is to not display www in your URL.)
Some, however, argue, dropping the prefix introduces much more confusion, especially as far as secure web pages are concerned. The https prefix is still displayed in the usual way and some Chrome testers believe this move is inconsistent with dropping http and could make secure https pages more confusing and “scarier” than they already appear to be to some users.
Chrome beta testers and developers reacted in an unusually aggressive way to the change, alleging that Google users its growing browser market share (more than 8%, according to StatCounter) to force UI changes.
It appears that Google is set on this change. Google’s Chromium team defended the move and claimed that 95% of Chrome “wouldn’t even notice the difference between a URL with a scheme and one without, let alone have any idea what the difference meant.”
In a response to a developer who complained about the copy and paste problem the omission of the prefix may introduce, a member of Google’s Chromium group wrote: “Our goal is to make everything work right in every case, which in this case means adding some clever heuristics to copy and pasting. This probably strikes you as dangerous and risky, but I suspect you don’t think twice about using the Omnibox in general, which has an enormous set of very complex heuristics to decide how to handle everything you type “correctly” without you noticing, or our tabstrip, which similarly has a lot of very complex algorithmic work under the hood. We’re not afraid of tackling difficult UI and trying to make it seamless; it’s what we’ve been doing for the whole of Chrome’s history.”
It is also worth noting that Apple has pioneered the omission of the http prefix in its mobile Safari browser. However, the motivation may have been space savings rather than simplifying web browsing overall. In fact, the iPhone browser still shows the http prefix as soon as users click the URL bar.
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