Hacker News Reader

Comment by wyday | Hacker News Reader

I'm using the latest dev release that has this feature implemented. Let me tell you how it actually works. The location bar looks like this:

    news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1263512

When I select it and press Ctrl-C it copies this to the clipboard:

    http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1263512

Nothing is broken.

View on HN

Useful to know, but I have to agree with portman. What about switching to an https: URL? Loads of sites default to http when they should be secure.

Perhaps it would be better to add a white 'Not identified' badge in the place where the green Certificate Name (or red broken certificate name) goes?

Clicking it would reveal a message that the site is not identified, and information being sent to it is viewable to third parties.

Nobody in my immediate family know what https:// means. They especially have no idea what its absence means.

... They especially have no idea what its absence means.

Oh, I wholly agree, this makes sense for the average user. It's just wasted space to most people. They've already dimmed everything but the domain name (a brilliant idea in every single way), making the prefix' "cognitive impact" rather minimal already. To that end, I don't personally see that removing it is necessary, nor helpful. So at best it maintains the status-quo, and arguably lowers it slightly.

But, since these decisions are largely made for the majorities, it does make sense that they're going that route; I'm not really annoyed, I'm just mildly disagreeing with the decision.

As to the white non-secure flag, I'd tint it slightly yellow so it raises an eyebrow for people interested in their own privacy; white is too ignorable, and much harder to see at a glance. On the whole, it's an interesting idea, as it'd effectively turn the whole http/https battle into a slight-but-real push to move to https entirely.

> As to the white non-secure flag, I'd tint it slightly yellow so it raises an eyebrow at people interested in their own privacy; white is too ignorable, and much harder to see at a glance. On the whole, it's an interesting idea, as it'd effectively turn the whole http/https battle into a slight-but-real push to move to https entirely.

Exactly what I'm thinking. Just raise it as info, then change it to a warning progressively over time, with some advance warning to web developers.

Copy and pasting using the X clipboard does not result in the addition of http://

Works for me.

Are you sure you weren't using the X primary selection (select, middle-click) instead of the X clipboard selection (usual ctrl-c/copy, ctrl-v/paste)?

On Mobile Safari, the URL is displayed without the http:// until you tab on it and it will include the http:// as the URL box expands.

This is clearly how hiding http:// should be done (if at all). Playing tricks with the clipboard is going to be confusing and frustrating to use. It is also suggested in other comments here; I hope the Chrome devs pick this up.

Try to copy "http://news.ycombinator.com to the clipboard.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com