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Comment by lloeki | Hacker News Reader

> I hate how Safari hides the full address in the address bar, for instance.

You have no idea how much this change makes the URL field palatable for regular Joe. Previously: hhtpttpp://faceblablah.com/techmumbo/jumbo?not=h4ck3r. Now: <lock icon>facebooook.com.ru => "wow this really is not Facebook!". I basically witnessed such behaviour change first hand.

> Or, how they removed scrollbars and force people to actually scroll every piece of the interface to check if there's something more to see, while before you could tell just by looking at scrollbars.

No need to scroll, you can check just by resting fingers on the touchpad (except in Chrome) and look at the scrollbars.

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Also, Safari don't hide scrollbars when you don't have a touchpad.

On the first point, you can just open Safari's preferences, head to the Advanced tab, and "show full website address." This is one of the first things I do, as I also dislike this behavior. :)

> No need to scroll, you can check just by resting fingers on the touchpad (except in Chrome) and look at the scrollbars.

Never knew this, really handy, thanks! Any idea if it is possible on a magic mouse? or only the trackpads?

And there you have demonstrated the entire thesis of the original article.

Except it's infinitely easier to slightly drag your hands on the trackpad your fingers are already on, than to glance over at the side of a window, identify a scroll bar, and glance back to the content you were viewing.

For an extra hint, when a view loads with scrollable content (or becomes scrollable as content is added), it tends to flash the scrollbar briefly.

> Previously: hhtpttpp://faceblablah.com/techmumbo/jumbo?not=h4ck3r. Now: <lock icon>facebooook.com.ru => "wow this really is not Facebook!". I basically witnessed such behaviour change first hand.

Anyone who does that is uneducated and ignorant; the proper response to that is to educate, not to remove the ability of those who are educated to do other things.

Everyone should be using the command line if that argument were true. Its much more efficient for most purposes once you know it well.

Using that argument, having a keyboard is too advanced as well. A microphone and a pointing device should be enough. And it is, but we all know not having one kills productivity.

> Everyone should be using the command line if that argument were true.

Well, yes — they should. Would you rather communicate with speech or by pointing and grunting?

We do need better languages for conversing with our computers, but we can't get rid of the need for language.

They should... and they do, in the form of Siri! I hope someday it outgrows its current limitation to relatively simple tasks.

Is Siri big in the US? Here in Europe I see a lot of people with iPhones but I have never seen anyone use Siri. I have seen my friend attempt whatsapp messages via the vice recognition thing while he is driving, but it looks way more hassle than what it is worth.

"The people who are educated" can turn the full URL display back on in Safari's settings.

In Safari Settings: Advanced->Check "Show full website address"

Years of education have been horribly ineffective, which is why phishing continues to work. Meanwhile, the ignorant audience keeps growing. A whole lot of UX work is about making ambiguous things less ambiguous and making the "right" or "safe" choice the default. In those scenarios, the best UX will make the non-default choice available with some additional effort (changing settings, diving deeper), which this feature in Safari absolutely does.

Hang on to your hat, because every other browser has been playing with the exact same feature, for the exact same set of reasons.

> Years of education have been horribly ineffective

It should be obvious by just looking how social engineering is working and have been using the same tricks for literally thousands of years. Classic children literature, before modernisation (like Disney), gives you a good idea on the same lessons needed to be taught then.

> the proper response to that is to educate, not to remove the ability of those who are educated to do other things

As a software developer, only one of those things are in your power.

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