 the practice many browsers have adopted of truncating URLs in the address bar to the hostname is emblematic of the decline and commercially driven infantilization of the web. understanding URLs — their roles and the ways and whys of how they are constructed — was an elementary skill of the original view-source web. hiding complete URLs encourages people to become ignorant consumers of mysterious information services, rather than informed participants in a public forum. 39 comments
 @interfluidity this is by design, if that wasn't obvious.
0
0
18 April at 14:40 | Open on socially.drinkingatmy.computer
 @interfluidity I don't ever want my browsers to do that. I want to know where I'm navigating.  @interfluidity@zirk.us i like how it is implemented in firefox / librefox: highlighting the domain name without hiding the rest.  @interfluidity similarly, I hate the practice of using inscrutable hashes for URLs. People I know will send me links to goddamn TikTok or whatever else and the link will be "t.cz.co.share/v?=10bfleb3kl\5bt:wpidchnwbtk2b2l29fcubwb2r8cyxvqlbb2r9ru" and I'm sorry but I'm not clicking that I don't give a shit it's not that hard to do something like "domain.whatever/username/videos/dateofposting" Reddit is trash now but this is something it does fairly well compared to everywhere else. @interfluidity @fox a possible counterpoint; many urls are now just meaningless strings of number and letters, so seeing them doesn't help anyway. It's also easier to trick someone with a spam domain such as Google.sussy.com/loads-of-shit-here so people can't make sense of it. @Foxy @interfluidity @fox Yes! Was going to comment something similar. Unfortunately, back in the day, this was never codified, policed, and enforced, and it’s doubtful anyone would do anything about it today. But even long ago I remember reading a PC Magazine editorial by the irreverent John C Dvorak (I think it was him) griping about sloppy gobbledygook urls. In an actual magazine. On paper. The kids just don’t understand.  @interfluidity I liked the web when, if you found a page you liked you could remove the filename at the end and then see a category page that page belonged to and see what other pages were there. Subdirectories had indicies and you could directly edit a url to get more information.  @interfluidity amen. Don't even get me fucking started on Safari's boneheaded "here's the title of the document during autocomplete". I use Safari as my work only browser, and trying to URL hack Jira items (because Jira is absolutely awful) is super annoying. On the other hand, what am I gonna do, dedicate a better browser to work logins? @danlyke @interfluidity (Sincere condolences on having to use Jira, lucky me got rid of that when I changed job recently.)  @unixwitch if you've not seen it yet, ff container tabs and temporary containers can help a lot with this too @danlyke @interfluidity @mensrea @unixwitch thanks. Firefox has enough glitches with web compatibility and, especially, PDF handling (ugh having to go to Chrome to get unaltered versions of my auto insurance cards) that I haven't chased profiles too far, but now that I'm off Chrome for everything but Meet, and have told FF to only download PDFs, never display them, it might be usable for work. @danlyke i've been having some issue recently with some sites not login in correctly with ff but none of those other issues. wouldn't it be nice if we could have a browser that actually did what we wanted @unixwitch  @mensrea @danlyke @unixwitch @RealGene it's not an auth issue though. there's issues with sites not managing their file and data sources properly so it's falling foul of the cross site scripting protections @mensrea I think we did, it was called Lynx. w3-mode if we wanted to be fancy. One of the first things to that got me attention on my blog (in 1998) was pointing out that the Web Standards Project was going to create a monoculture, and... here we are. I suspect my PDF ills are fond issue on these Macs in particular, I can't browse music from Musicnotes either. But the fact that if you download from a PDF view in Firefox it munges the file is.... not cool. @danlyke my partner is having issues with pdfs on their mac as well but we chalked that up to the adobe subscription experiencing. and they've been using ff to do all their pdf reading @mensrea yay that FF works! I've avoided poisoning these machines with Adobe, still use Preview for all my PDF-ness. And that, at least works. So I use Chrome for downloading insurance cards and buying sheet music, and have set Firefox to hopefully never try to display them, just download them.  @interfluidity That process of enshittification, that locking into opaque "information services" rather than open format documents, is demanded by capitalism. The only alternative is to overthrow capitalism once and for all, but y'all ain't ready for that.  @interfluidity Understanding how to hand-crank a Ford without breaking your arm was an elementary skill of the original car. The technology tends towards simplification and user-friendliness as adoption approaches 100%. Do we really want to keep the web a land of the privileged where "you must be at least this nerd to talk to your grandma?" @mark you don’t have to be a nerd. but things should teach you about them if you are open to learning. hermetic sealing is a bad heuristic for “user friendliness”. cars are more user friendly when you can open their hoods and replace their parts. they are becoming far less user friendly now. preserving handcranks would teach nothing, relative to electronic ignition, which is better. things should get better. but they shouldn’t be hidden just for the sake of hiding. @interfluidity In the case of URLs, my understanding is that the move to domain name display stems from user testing that suggested that most users consider the full URL eyes-glaze-over noise and the salient piece of information (the one they need to keep themselves safe online) is whether the domain is the one they think they're talking to. In that way, URL obfuscation is a safety feature. @mark every bad idea can be smuggled through as a safety feature. destroying people’s capacity to replace parts in the products they purchase and own, or use whatever ink cartridge they choose, is for “safety”. a world of people completely incapable of understanding or exercising agency with the most basic elements of their world is the least safe kind of world, even if individual withdrawals of agency are in some narrow sense protective. @mark there are thoughtful ways to balance safety and encouragements to agency, eg https://z0ne.social/notes/9s8x1hzmu3 @interfluidity That makes sense. I like the "highlight the domain" approach too. What about the mobile form factor where the text box is narrow? @mark the mobile form factor is generally harder to invite agency within. but people should try! it’d be great if when clicking into a URL in a mobile browser, for example, an editable box wrapping the whole URL appeared, rather than just a narrow truncation that is hard both to see and edit.  @interfluidity  @cweickhmann @interfluidity @lisamelton Neither spark joy. I will change the config to show file extensions on every computer people trust me to handle.  @interfluidity This is a bit strong, and slightly misses the point. Don't forget all those request and response headers which are also hidden away from public gaze; they can carry some nasty shit too. But we don't want to see all that because it is noise, and noise can be used to hide even more nasty stuff. The important thing is that you know you are talking to the server you want to be talking to. @khleedril URLs are more elementary than request and response headers. one should learn how to share a link, even without a little button. familiarity with URLs is not mostly about observing "nasty shit". it's understanding the most basic physics of the information systems that structure our world.  @interfluidity In 8th grade in San Diego we had few days of a pseudo home-economics. Among the tasks was to learn to read and understand a bus schedule and a train schedule. This was in the 1980s and one needed to do these things manually. Reading the timetables and their legends and doing work to plan a trip on X day at Y time was complex. A URL address has--to me--analogous complexity. But useful for wayfinding. Essential even. It's also a great way to conceal the fact that you're being tracked. Also, this seems like a good time to be the smart-ass and mention: https://wheregoes.com/ :)  @interfluidity Meh, seems like an unpopular opinion here but it's good to stop people getting fooled by stuff like login.mybank.com.example.com Being able to parse a URL is good, but should not be required for safe web use.  @interfluidity That's right! And hiding search engine results with AI-regurgitated bullshit DOES EXACTLY THE SAME THING. |
Gregory's Server