Full url in Opera 17. Any chances?

A Former User

Originally posted by Frenzie:

Because really, if you don't understand how it's useful that you're on page 6 instead of page 7 without having to bother scrolling down or focusing the addressbar then discussing this with you is fruitless.

I'm unable to see any use of knowing on which page number I'm here, but if you really want to know it pressing the End key will display it in the blog comments / forum pages "jumper" easily.

Originally posted by scratchspace:

Originally posted by Frenzie:

That's not a defense for hiding things. That's an argument for highlighting the domain.

FWIW, it would be fine with me if the entire URL was shown, though I do prefer that the domain name be highlighted. I presume the purpose of hiding the tail-end portions of some URLs is to make it easier to read the main sections of the URL (for those who need to do that).

Adding more to what scratchspace said, maybe actual highlighting wouldn't look very good or bold wouldn't stand out from the regular text as lowlighting the rest of the URL does? Italics decrease readability.

Deleted User

Deleted User

Originally posted by scratchspace:

The clear implication of your position here is not simply that the browser should show the full address by default but that users should know—not just have access to, but know—the complete URL of each and every webpage that they visit.

Not every user, but certainly myself, being a moderately precise man that I am.

Originally posted by scratchspace:

I did not say that "urls are not essential to browsing the web" (whatever that might mean). Rather, I said that "showing the full address, all in the same font, as the default behavior for every webpage" is not essential.

When you think it's alright to fool around with the url in web address field, it's very odd to withhold options for users to fool around some more.

And you still provided no indication how it is practical to "focus" the urls, while at the same time you demand me to prove the practicality of the full url.

As Frenzie showed, urls have the same function as page numbers. Imagine your bookmarks and history with "focused" imprecise urls, recoverable only when you copy and paste them to Notepad. How do you edit your bookmarks? How do you review the visited pages?

Originally posted by scratchspace:

You tell me what the problem—the practical problem—would be with that. If there is a practical problem with it, well, then I might object to it.

Each unique document on the web is referred to by url. When the url is not precise, you don't know if you are on the same exact page or not. This is the very foundation of web browsing: You visit web addresses. Just like reading a book: you read the pages. The book's system is linear succession. The web's system is links cross-referring to the pages.

Now the practical problem: The links ARE urls. The url is every link's essence. Everything else about links is inessential. Take the url away and you are not browsing any more. You are just clicking around randomly, never knowing where you are going and not knowing where you came from. It's like reading a book not in succession, but beginning from the middle, then looking here and there randomly, and not paying attention to what you are missing in the process. Is this an impractical problem?

Now your turn. Tell how it is practical to "focus" urls and how it is impractical to see the complete url. Doesn't it take time and effort from the dev team to mangle urls, with the danger of having to fix it when they do it wrong? Why not leave it alone?

I also noticed this little thing:

Originally posted by scratchspace:

A browser, on the other hand, unquestionably performs its defining, essential function regardless of whether it "show(s) the full address".

What on earth is a web browser's essential function? To me it's visiting web addresses, a.k.a. urls. To you?

By the way, urls are, by definition, either correct and precise or not. "Fullness" is actually changing the topic. Urls must be correct and I have to be able to verify the correctness before I click or press enter. And since web browser is the tool to visit web addresses for me, this task of verifying urls should not be too difficult. There's something very wrong going on when very basic tasks are being made difficult and it's called "progress".

Edit:

Originally posted by rafaelluik:

Adding more to what scratchspace said, maybe actual highlighting wouldn't look very good or bold wouldn't stand out from the regular text as lowlighting the rest of the URL does? Italics decrease readability.

Sounds like more arguments for more options. Why muddle and mangle urls at all when it opens a can of worms? But when you insist on doing it, why not do it properly with all the necessary options to make it really practical, including the self-evident option to opt out from muddling, to keep urls as they are.

frenzie

frenzie

Originally posted by scratchspace:

"Notepad"? Now that would be a bit much. But, no, you never have to leave the address bar. You paste it right there. This may be "unintuitive", but once you know it, it's easy and can be executed in all of three seconds.

Okay, so it involves "merely" three extra steps on top of just glancing over. But surely you realize that I don't exclusively visit websites with which I already am familiar? Or that I've already would've had to do that multiple times just while I was typing this?

Originally posted by scratchspace:

You've misrepresented (unintentionally) my position. I did not say "page numbers are essential to the reading of the book"; I said "If you're trying to find a topic or other item in a nonfiction book, you go to either the table of contents or the index, and page numbers are essential to that process." But, hey, if it makes you happy, I'll concede that page numbers are not "essential" for many or even most readers. But your argument here is a specious one and so that's really beside the point. Why? Because (1) the full URL is, as I've demonstrated, easily accessible in Opera 17 and (2) the elimination of page numbers from books would significantly impair the functionality of many nonfiction books for many readers (if only academic readers, of which there are many, as I'm sure you know).

My argument is not, of course, that page numbers should be removed. Hiding the query string and the hash most certainly impairs functionality, oftentimes of the exact same kind as hiding the page numbers would. If nothing else, you should get from this how your argument about URLs sounds to me. Because I've not misrepresented your position, merely transplanted it on a subject matter you somehow see as different. Yet websites are just a funky form of books that occasionally leaf through themselves thanks to hyperlinks. But ironically, knowing something like a page number can be all the more important on a website because there's no other way to tell how far in you are.

Originally posted by rafaelluik:

I'm unable to see any use of knowing on which page number I'm here, but if you really want to know it pressing the End key will display it in the blog comments / forum pages "jumper" easily.

That's worse than focusing the addressbar, although I suppose I could easily write a bookmarklet that jumped to the end of the page if I wasn't there and back to where I came from if at the end of the page. But why should I have to just for what I used to be able to do with a quick glance?

Originally posted by rafaelluik:

Adding more to what scratchspace said, maybe actual highlighting wouldn't look very good or bold wouldn't stand out from the regular text as lowlighting the rest of the URL does? Italics decrease readability.

Hard-coded gray text looks pretty bad and decreases readability. Hiding text eliminates its readability.

Originally posted by scratchspace:

I'm not certain of what Frenzie had in mind, but to be clear, when I said "highlighting", I did not mean that the font of the domain name should actually be boldfaced (or modified in any other way). I meant only that the domain name should be more prominent than the other elements of the URL.

That's right. There are many ways of highlighting something. However, the bold thing depends on the OS. On Windows that's true; on Mac and usually on Linux it's not.

Originally posted by scratchspace:

Frenzie, regarding a "misunderstanding", I'm not sure that I'm following you. Note that ersi said this: "why should any part of the address be hidden or even lowlighted"? Hence, my choice of wording. And, to be clear, I would stand by my statement even with the wording "all in the same font" omitted.

I don't believe that ersi said anything against highlighting. But as I said at the beginning of this message, I don't know when I'm going to need the query string. Of course one doesn't need to see the full URL at all times, even users like ersi and I. But we don't know in advance when we do and when we don't need to see it, now do we?

frenzie

frenzie

Originally posted by scratchspace:

Originally posted by ersi:

As Frenzie showed, urls have the same function as page numbers. Imagine your bookmarks and history with "focused" imprecise urls, recoverable only when you copy and paste them to Notepad. How do you edit your bookmarks?

You edit them in the "Edit bookmark" dialogue. I don't understand why you're asking this—have you actually installed and used Opera 17?

He said imagine.

A Former User

Originally posted by ersi:

Urls must be correct and I have to be able to verify the correctness before I click or press enter.

That's what the status bar is for. As for pressing Enter in that case you obviously already know whether the URL is right or not because you followed it from your bookmarks or pasted the URL yourself and the address field will retain the focus and the text in regular font you can read. In the case of following a hardcoded link from a external app that don't show its target then URL would be unavoidable anyway.

Originally posted by Frenzie:

That's worse than focusing the addressbar, although I suppose I could easily write a bookmarklet that jumped to the end of the page if I wasn't there and back to where I came from if at the end of the page. But why should I have to just for what I used to be able to do with a quick glance?

Why do you need to know the page number when the page is completely functional (and its link is easily accessible - F8 - and easily copyable so you can share or do anything else with it), that's what you don't answer.

Originally posted by Frenzie:

Hard-coded gray text looks pretty bad and decreases readability. Hiding text eliminates its readability.

Lowlighting and hiding the end of the URL while keeping the domain in black increases the readability and the sense of importance *of the main domain*. That's what users are being given and informed about.

frenzie

frenzie

Originally posted by rafaelluik:

Why do you need to know the page number when the page is completely functional (and its link is easily accessible - F8 - and easily copyable so you can share or do anything else with it), that's what you don't answer.

Are you seriously asking why I might care to know the difference between page 1 and page 2 of a document without actually having to skim through whatever happens to be on my screen? But perhaps here's what you don't understand: I might have page 1 and 2 open simultaneously.* And I might have been looking at one or more other documents for a bit before returning to these other pages. The page title therefore is just not enough, because that's twice the same thing. You would have me waste my time skimming through or focusing the addressbar. Remember, a website is like a book, but not quite. I don't automatically know more or less where I am because of where I flipped the page to. I do more with my browser than occasionally frivolously browsing through this forum in my spare time, although even then I don't appreciate the lack of such basic navigational aids. My spare time is also limited.

Originally posted by rafaelluik:

Lowlighting and hiding the end of the URL while keeping the domain in black increases the readability and the sense of importance *of the main domain*. That's what users are being given and informed about.

It really doesn't. It barely stands out, notwithstanding the gray text's horrible UX.

* I keep talking about pages to keep things simple, but of course there's far more involved. Chapter headings, language, search strings, etc.

Deleted User

Deleted User

Originally posted by scratchspace:

But notwithstanding your wording "urls I visit", you have clearly been discussing this matter not as one of personal preferences but rather as a matter of proper browser design. If you would now would like to say that your point concerning the showing or not showing of the full URL is merely a matter of your personal preference, fine, but that's not what you've been saying.

If it were a matter of my own personal preference, I would not even have spoken. The thing is that url is a basic web standard, an essential element to it. You said it's not. Or, the way you put it, "not as essential as page numbers in a book". Sorry, but urls really are more essential than page numbers in a book. Below I'll show how.

Originally posted by scratchspace:

Originally posted by ersi:

As Frenzie showed, urls have the same function as page numbers. Imagine your bookmarks and history with "focused" imprecise urls, recoverable only when you copy and paste them to Notepad. How do you edit your bookmarks?

You edit them in the "Edit bookmark" dialogue. I don't understand why you're asking this—have you actually installed and used Opera 17?

You missed a little important detail: I said "imagine". You are here defending the mangling of urls in the address field. Imagine, how you would defend if urls were mangled in bookmark items. Ask yourself: With an imprecise url, is it really still a bookmark?

Originally posted by scratchspace:

Whoaaaa . . . Nobody said anything about "tak(ing) the URL away". The issue that you raised was that of "half-hidden" link URLs, that is, truncated link URLs, as a parallel to the truncation of address bar URLs.

It just occurred to me that there is one legitimate case for truncating urls - namely, when there's not enough space on the screen. But the current case is far from it. What is going on right now is embellished with arguments like "hide irrelevant information" or "protect you", i.e. somebody else is doing the thinking for you, in this case deciding for you what you should see or not. It's called censorship. Read the article I linked above close tot he beginning of the thread. My arguments are against that.

Apart from it being censorship, it's actually the case on the web that urls are essential and web browsing means visiting web addresses. Now I'll show how.

Originally posted by scratchspace:

Originally posted by ersi:

Originally posted by scratchspace:

A browser, on the other hand, unquestionably performs its defining, essential function regardless of whether it "show(s) the full address".

What on earth is a browser's essential function? To me it's visiting web addresses, a.k.a. urls. To you?

It's visiting webpages. As for your assertion that the essential function is "visiting web addresses, a.k.a. urls", I can't believe that you're saying this.

This is a subtle but crucial difference now. Yes, the web consists of pages, but the pages are identified by urls. To bring up the book analogy again, are the book's author and title irrelevant when you are looking for a book to read?

Url is to webpages what ISBN is to books. Without url you won't even get to your first webpage, so, even though for you it may seem that the browser's essential function is to visit webpages, visiting webpages cannot even begin without a url. Therefore I named the browser's essential function more precisely.

Moreover, there are other files on the web, files to download, file lists on servers to browse, dead links, etc. By url I can often tell what kind of operation to expect from the browser when I click or enter it.

Originally posted by scratchspace:

Originally posted by ersi:

By the way, urls are, by definition, either correct and precise or not. "Fullness" is actually changing the topic.

No, actually it's not; it's only a question of what is displayed in the address bar. The page itself—do I actually have to say this?—is not affected.

Let's repeat it so it will be very clear: You won't see any page at all in the browser if the url is incorrect. Or you may be looking at the wrong page, if the browser is hiding the url from you. The page may be there, but you can't access it without knowing the url and entering it precisely to the point. This is rather essential and elementary feedback from the browser, has been there all along. Muddling this functionality is certainly non-standard, if not outright criminal.

Originally posted by scratchspace:

This is all from me, guys!

See you tomorrow.

Originally posted by rafaelluik:

Originally posted by ersi:

Urls must be correct and I have to be able to verify the correctness before I click or press enter.

That's what the status bar is for.

Indeed, status bar is for that. Now, would you be able to articulate a defence for mangling the url on the status bar as eloquently as you have in case of address field?

Originally posted by rafaelluik:

As for pressing Enter in that case you obviously already know whether the URL is right or not because you followed it from your bookmarks or pasted the URL yourself and the address field will retain the focus and the text in regular font you can read.

There's more to it. I often enough extract urls from links, for example when noticing that the url is evidently malformed and needs editing to take me to the right place, or when I need to go to a slightly different destination than the url. For this task, the status bar is not enough. The most obvious place for this task is the address field. This is why I care a lot what is going on there.

I need precise feedback of the address where I stand. Something less than full exact url on the address field makes the software in question something less than a browser. There is more stuff on the web than just webpages and it's often important to know it before clicking or pressing enter.

missingno

missingno

So,
wellknownhoster.com/goodsite/
and
wellknownhoster.com/badsite/
are basically the same to any user? I mean, obviously there is no reason to know on which side I am as they both share the same domain.

Deleted User

Deleted User

Originally posted by scratchspace:

What, are we getting metaphysical here? Or are you simply not understanding that the browser knows and stores the full URL, regardless of whether it's displayed in the most obvious location?

If it knows and stores it but doesn't display it, what's the use? Remember that you are defending the mangling of urls, saying that it's somehow practical. This is a rather metaphysical point to defend. I do not envy your position at all.

frenzie

frenzie

Originally posted by ersi:

Let's repeat it so it will be very clear: You won't see any page at all in the browser if the url is incorrect. Or you may be looking at the wrong page, if the browser is hiding the url from you. The page may be there, but you can't access it without knowing the url and entering it precisely to the point. This is rather essential and elementary feedback from the browser, has been there all along. Muddling this functionality is certainly non-standard, if not outright criminal.

That actually reminds me of something. Rafael asked why I am "obsessed" with the query string and hash, and I think I sufficiently expressed my astonishment at the very question. Well, I don't know if this bug still exists, but for a while the MyOpera forum would occasionally try to send me to a link like http://my.opera.com/community/forums/findpost.pl?idx=14888352.* Hiding the query string would've made it impossible for me to see at a glance what the problem was and fix it. I would've been unfamiliar with the regular format, and I may never have noticed the problem at all, even with my current knowledge, had it required focusing the addressbar.

You might counter that most users wouldn't be able to do this kind of simple problem solving regardless. Perhaps you'd be right; I haven't the slightest idea. But I can tell you one thing: if you hide the query string by default, far fewer people will develop similar capabilities autonomously.

* Something along those lines; I don't recall the details but the point is the argument not "id" like it's supposed to, or perhaps there was something in front of the numbers that wasn't supposed to be there.

serious

serious

Aaanyhow, without reading the flamefest (though it looks very funny): I prefer to see the whole address, including protocol and query string, at all times. It's not like it distracts you any more from the page than a shortened URL and in case you need to know eg. a query string param you don't have to do bullshit like focusing the address bar first.

I think Opera12 had the implementation right, option for showing the full address or shortened version and if you click into the address field when having the shortened version it also shows you the _full_ address with protocol and everything.

Deleted User

Deleted User

Originally posted by Frenzie:

That actually reminds me of something. Rafael asked why I am "obsessed" with the query string and hash, and I think I sufficiently expressed my astonishment at the very question. Well, I don't know if this bug still exists, but for a while the MyOpera forum would occasionally try to send me to a link like http://my.opera.com/community/forums/findpost.pl?idx=14888352.* Hiding the query string would've made it impossible for me to see at a glance what the problem was and fix it.

That question of Rafael was silly.
Another use case when a full url is very useful/handy is when you want to access some data which sometimes you can't directly from the page you are on. By modifying the string you can access data which you otherwise would have to search for at first and wasting time.
Worked for me more often, except I got an access denied

frenzie

frenzie

Originally posted by serious:

I think Opera12 had the implementation right, option for showing the full address or shortened version and if you click into the address field when having the shortened version it also shows you the _full_ address with protocol and everything.

The lowlighted text has been hard-coded gray since it first showed up in Opera 11. The implementation was better, but definitely not right. By making it only work with a particular color scheme, it's most assuredly broken. It'd actually be less broken if they hard-coded all three colors, but that'd obviously be the worst "solution" to this fairly severe GUI bug.

The simplest fix would be a switch to disable all meddling with the addressbar.

A proper fix which maintains the undesired behavior of lowlighting might check if there's sufficient contrast between the background color and the lowlighted text color. It could perhaps even calculate a lowlighting color on the fly, based on background and text color. A simplified version of this fix would turn off lowlighting when contrast is too low, but that'd just make everyone with a more or less standard color scheme jealous.

Another possible proper fix would implement actual highlighting. As long as it doesn't work with hard-coded text colors, just about anything should be better than the current disaster.

The best solution would be extensive configuration options or an extensive API so one can achieve results similar to Locationbar². Here's all the styling handles it offers:

.textbox-presentation-box 
  .textbox-presentation 
    .textbox-presentation-prePath 
    .textbox-presentation-protocol 
    .textbox-presentation-subdomain 
    .textbox-presentation-domain 
    .textbox-presentation-port 
    .textbox-presentation-path 
    .textbox-presentation-segment-label 
    .textbox-presentation-slash 
    .textbox-presentation-pathFile 
    .textbox-presentation-file 
    .textbox-presentation-query 
    .textbox-presentation-fragment 
  .textbox-overflow-ellipsis

The best solution would of course only be the best when implemented in addition to the simplest fix, or on top of one other other possible fixes. By itself it would be a rather marginal improvement too complicated for most.

serious

serious

Originally posted by Frenzie:

making it only work with a particular color scheme

ok, I dont have such issues as I use the default skin

Originally posted by Frenzie:

The best solution would be extensive configuration options or an extensive API so one can achieve results similar to Locationbar².

+1, best would be for skins or the user directly to be able to style the different url-parts

EDIT: Ps: does Locationbar² allow for eg :focus selector with these attributes?

frenzie

frenzie

Originally posted by serious:

ok, I dont have such issues as I use the default skin

I like the rest of Opera so much that I went for a lighter shade of gray than I used before the Opera 11 addressbar disaster, and on another installation I went with X11 with custom colors instead of desktop integration. But I've been using Opera for many years and have extensively customized my installation; if I were just trying Opera and saw it utterly failing on my custom color scheme—well, let's just say I would not be impressed. Opera 15+ lacks Opera's other redeeming qualities.

By the way, I'm not talking about skins. I'm talking about my operating system or window manager.

Originally posted by serious:

EDIT: Ps: does Locationbar² allow for eg :focus selector with these attributes?

I couldn't say, good question. I'm of course talking about the principle, not the specifics.

frenzie

frenzie

Originally posted by Krake:

Another use case when a full url is very useful/handy is when you want to access some data which sometimes you can't directly from the page you are on. By modifying the string you can access data which you otherwise would have to search for at first and wasting time.

I just realized I've been using this example since they made the forums worse: http://my.opera.com/community/forums/tgr.dml

A Former User

Originally posted by Krake:

Originally posted by Frenzie:

That actually reminds me of something. Rafael asked why I am "obsessed" with the query string and hash, and I think I sufficiently expressed my astonishment at the very question. Well, I don't know if this bug still exists, but for a while the MyOpera forum would occasionally try to send me to a link like http://my.opera.com/community/forums/findpost.pl?idx=14888352.* Hiding the query string would've made it impossible for me to see at a glance what the problem was and fix it.

That question of Rafael was silly.
Another use case when a full url is very useful/handy is when you want to access some data which sometimes you can't directly from the page you are on. By modifying the string you can access data which you otherwise would have to search for at first and wasting time.
Worked for me more often, except I got an access denied

My question was not silly. You can check and edit the URL string easily with F8.

A Former User

Originally posted by ersi:

Originally posted by rafaelluik:

Originally posted by ersi:

Urls must be correct and I have to be able to verify the correctness before I click or press enter.

That's what the status bar is for.

Indeed, status bar is for that. Now, would you be able to articulate a defence for mangling the url on the status bar as eloquently as you have in case of address field?

Honestly I haven't even noticed the http:// part is trimmed from the floating status bar, when a link leads to a different protocol like a https:// or ftp:// URL it's shown though so there's your way to verify it. The rest of the URL is there...

Originally posted by ersi:

Originally posted by rafaelluik:

As for pressing Enter in that case you obviously already know whether the URL is right or not because you followed it from your bookmarks or pasted the URL yourself and the address field will retain the focus and the text in regular font you can read.

There's more to it. I often enough extract urls from links, for example when noticing that the url is evidently malformed and needs editing to take me to the right place, or when I need to go to a slightly different destination than the url. For this task, the status bar is not enough. The most obvious place for this task is the address field. This is why I care a lot what is going on there.

"I often enough extract urls from links" - if you mean via the "copy link address" command then you pasted it and it'll be displayed fully.
"when I need to go to a slightly different destination than the url" - then I assume the protocol is not important, or are you really in need of pursuing the protocol to go to a sightly different page?

Deleted User

Deleted User

Originally posted by rafaelluik:

Originally posted by ersi:

Now, would you be able to articulate a defence for mangling the url on the status bar as eloquently as you have in case of address field?

Honestly I haven't even noticed the http:// part is trimmed from the floating status bar, when a link leads to a different protocol like a https:// or ftp:// URL it's shown though so there's your way to verify it. The rest of the URL is there...

My question was if you are able to defend any mangling of the url on the status bar, as you are trying to defend the mangling of the address field. Since you offered no defence, I take it that your answer is no. Which is good.

Originally posted by rafaelluik:

"I often enough extract urls from links" - if you mean via the "copy link address" command then you pasted it and it'll be displayed fully.

Hence it's good when the program doesn't mangle it. Which has been my point all along.

Originally posted by rafaelluik:

"when I need to go to a slightly different destination than the url" - then I assume the protocol is not important, or are you really in need of pursuing the protocol to go to a sightly different page?

A case in point:
http://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/
ftp://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/

Is the protocol not important there? Absolutely everything is important. Above you said "I haven't even noticed the http:// part is trimmed from the floating status bar, when a link leads to a different protocol like a https:// or ftp:// URL it's shown though". Thus the protocol evidently *is* important. If https, ftp, gopher, etc. must be shown, then there's no justification to remove http either, right?

If you still think that mangling of the urls is justified, then you need to also think exactly how far it is justified, because obviously there's a limit. At least you would notice for example when the address field and status bar were entirely removed, right? So, if a little mangling is okay, think further, how far would you allow it. As for me, I allow no mangling at all. The program must display everything faithfully. There's no reason for it not to.

serious

serious

Originally posted by rafaelluik:

You can check and edit the URL string easily with F8

and previously I could check it easily without doing anything if I wished so.

Originally posted by rafaelluik:

the protocol is not important

It is for me at work. Long story short, we have same addresses running on http or https (eg. depending on host entry to skip the ssl-offloading load balancer) so going to a url without a protocol will (in my chrome experience) in 90% of the time give you exactly the wrong one from the history. Seeing the full url is way easier for debugging and selecting the right one from the address bar autocomplete dropdown.