Hacker News Reader

Comment by sirn | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why Chrome don't implement something similar to LocationBar2[1]. It expands to include the protocol when URL bar is focused, and hides the protocol on unfocus. It also tries to make sure text width never changes when protocol is hidden by center-aligned the domain part, e.g.

    URL: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1829087

When protocol is hidden, will be displayed as:

    URL:     news.ycombinator.com   /item?id=1829087

[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4014/

View on HN

The fact that they don't lends weight to the spdy conspiracy theory (can it be called that that?)

I think its more likely that they realise most people don't understand what the http/https bit is all about, so its much simpler if you ignore it altogether.

I honestly think http/https should beside the point. Websites should transparently redirect to https if they need to (so the padlock appears), but there is no need to signal this to the user with some cryptic techno-gabble.

Shoulda, coulda, woulda ...

The web largely of sites that could do things better, but don't. We have to work around that, because you and everyone else here knows in the deepest pits of our little black hearts that these sites won't be fixed.

I should imagine google, having access to a 'quite' large web index, would know if hiding the http/https would break the Internet for the majority of web users. I am guessing this actually only happens in a very few edge cases, and those edge cases should fix their sites, not hold back development for everybody else!

Websites should transparently redirect to https if they need to

From a UX point of view, definitely. But from a security point of view, this isn't good.

Really? Why? Users should rely on the browser indicating a secure site via a padlock or some other indicator. I would imagine most real users would not know the difference between http and https to asking them to base their security decision on that is misguided.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com