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I really dislike any attempt to modify strings like this. I find it invariably causes problems in edge cases. What if a site handles slashes differently to how Google expects? Where do GET arguments go? What if I want to modify the URL? Breadcrumbs are great when each part is navigable, but does example.com/worldnews/2020/06 actually lead anywhere, or is it an invalid address for the site? I have absolutely no interest in Google being allowed to dictate what should and should not be a valid address.

Probably worse than the change itself, though, is the tendency of anyone who makes such a change to start playing fast and loose with actually representing the underlying address. You mention Windows 10's address bar - it's one of the worst offenders. My Windows Explorer is currently sitting in my downloads folder, which is at "C:\Users\Wyatt\Downloads". The address bar reads "This PC > Downloads". When I click on the address bar to edit the address, it changes to just "Downloads". What part of all of this is in any way useful to me or the likely action I'm trying to take when I click on the address bar?

Your arguments are definitely salient.

However, I think there is something to this idea - a breadcrumb style approach by default in Chrome would encourage developers to use paths in more standard ways that refer to resources, not heavy parameter coupling. As you noted, there are technical barriers to implementing this solution, which might encourage some other good things - servers providing resource discovery so that the browser can understand valid paths when visiting a site.

I address that in my point: Google deciding what paths developers should use is precisely what I don't want. I'll decide what resources should be discoverable on my site, not Google. I'll decide what paths should be valid, not Google.

Google has too much power to dictate standards already, and has been quite happy to use that power for their own sake, rather than the good of the user. I'm not interested in giving them any more.

My original point was not about Google specifically, it was about a new feature in browsers in general. I absolutely agree that Google have too much power already.

And like I wrote in my first post, the resource discoverability could be handled by the site itself via some manifest file in a standard format, like robots.txt. It wouldn't be dictated by anybody else.

"This PC > Downloads" may point to the same directory as "C:\Users\Wyatt\Downloads", but Explorer may also handle or display differently or with different options. I've had various issues with this, such as not being able to copy the full actual path from the address bar, a sub-folder in one of these "This PC" folders or libraries showing no columns with no option to show them, and sometimes being indistinguishable from the Public folder. The full path matters in Explorer, Finder, and browsers, and should never be hidden without an easy visible way to show the full path or have it always show.

In Windows Explorer, if you click to the right of the breadcrumbs, you will get a text input with the full path to the current directory. If a solution for URLs were to attempt to switch to breadcrumbs (seems like it should be site-configurable via a meta tag or something), then a similar click to the right of the breadcrumbs could expose the underlying URL.

if you click Downloads, it won't give the C:\Users\User\Downloads path, it'll just give Downloads.

> I really dislike any attempt to modify strings like this. I find it invariably causes problems in edge cases. What if a site handles slashes differently to how Google expects?

I think it would have to be some standard format that websites use, not just string manipulation in the browsers. And certainly not some Google dictated feature! For the same reason, each part would have to be navigable on these sites, to work as I described. There's various possible solutions, like meta tags or some manifest like breadcrumbs.jsonld mentioned in another comment.

The fact that Windows Explorer doesn't show the full URL in special folders is a separate issue, I only mentioned it for the breadcrumbs example.

If you're talking about something other than manipulating the URL, I don't understand what problem you're solving. Sites which believe that breadcrumbs would be helpful for navigation already have breadcrumbs, I see no reason to force it on everyone else.

But I disagree with you that not showing the full address in Windows Explorer is a separate issue. In my experience loss of edge-case functionality is a core aspect of changing interfaces. Maybe in another world the address would be preserved, and my use case would still work. But someone else's unusual use would not.

Instead of manipulating the URL it would replace it, and instead of each site doing it their way it would be handled by the browser in the browser UI. Sites can implement their own back button too, doesn't mean that's where it belongs.

Think about how Powershell use objects instead of text to chain together commands. The address isn't just text, it's structured data, why not treat it as such and make it more useful?

I find the way Explorer in Windows 10 handles this behavior to be annoying and inconvenient. It finds ways to change paths into new canonical locations, for example browse to C:\Users\Yourname and instead of giving you breadcrumbs like Local Disk > Users > Yourname, it simply shows "Yourname" as a special home folder. When you click back in the address bar, there are no breadcrumbs anymore, it's erased your trail.

Attempts to make things simpler by hiding the truth about where you really are in navigation seems like a way to make the web less discoverable except by Google. If you're on a web site you can usually learn more about its structure based on URL format. This makes that more difficult.

But there's nothing stopping websites from offering that without browser support. It can just show that at the top of the page. Everything it provides is under the authority of the website. The URL needs to be provided by the browser because it's not entirely under the authority of the website, but that's not the case for a breadcrumb bar.

Yes, imagine if the browser vendors decided to _improve the usability of the URL bar_ instead of trying to remove it...

The only difference between

  Example.com > Worldnews > 2020 > 06 > 14 > Big aquatic monster spotted outside Tokyo
  forum.example.com > Sport > Football > Spain > Real Madrid

and

  https://example.com/worldnews/2020/06/14/big-aquatic-monster-spotted-outside-tokyo
  https://forum.example.com/sport/football/spain/real-madrid

is a little bit of reformatting and upcasing and linkifying (or otherwise making selectable) the individual path segments of the URL.

And probably some clever logic to deal with the randomforum.php?fid=12345&tpcid=984.3&page=5 goop that is still all-too-common... :/

>And probably some clever logic to deal with the randomforum.php?fid=12345&tpcid=984.3&page=5 goop that is still all-too-common... :/

You say that as though websites like that are random small sites. HN has that kind of a URL, so do YouTube and Google.

Hacker News doesn't have breadcrumbs either. The concept of a directory hierarchy inherently doesn't fit.

You could try to map the parent ==> child relationship of every individual post URL, which might be cool, but think about how long the URLs would get.

For sites with breadcrumbs though, the URL absolutely should follow the crumbs (and I've argued for such at my company).

> I actually wouldn't mind if the URL bar was replaced with a breadcrumb bar on some sites ...

Which sites?

Anyway, almost everyone else would mind. Especially if there was no option to revert to normal behaviour.

> It could then work like in Explorer in Windows 10, ...

That sounds like the worst of both worlds. If people want Explorer in Windows 10 behaviour - can't they just run Explorer in Windows 10?

If people want Chrome as it was yesterday, they've basically got no option now.

> But URLs aren't necessarily always the best solution for navigation.

The Chromium devs demonstrated their lack of interest in being able to navigate via URL / location bar a half decade ago when they changed the default on all operating systems to be single-click in location bar to 'select the whole address'.

I'm beginning to think they are not our friends.

The option they have is Firefox

Note this is talking about Explorer, more recently named File Explorer, rather than Internet Explorer, the browser.

Argh, of course. My mistake.

I typically run up breadcrumbkiller as part of any Microsoft Windows desktop build, so I rarely see that configuration for long.

For myself (and I'd wager most people), I want to clear the URL and go to a totally different URL much more often than I want to manually manipulate the URL I'm currently on, so I like the change in default. Many casual users probably didn't even know a quick way to select the whole URL when it wasn't the default.

There were several extensions that transformed location bar like you propose, but naturally just did simple domain, path and query segments transformation into clickable buttons producing breadcrumbs. It was a delight to use and I miss them in Firefox since Quantum leap prevented them to work any longer.

https://www.ghacks.net/2011/03/01/improve-firefoxs-urlbar-wi...

They by default worked very similarly the aforementioned Windows Explorer, what in focused state with keyboard input turns into "raw" text field.

On some sites, this could be done using breadcrumbs.jsonld:

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/breadcr...

Sadly not used everywhere, but maybe browser support would encourage its usage by site owners.

I’ve implemented this on my site. The pain in the ass is that Google will only sometimes show you the breadcrumbs, so it’s very difficult to tell if you encoded it correctly.

Very few URLs are perfectly hierarchical in a way that would work with this scheme. For example, look at the URL of this page you're reading now.

I think that's a great example of the benefits though. HN could continue to use their fairly opaque URLs in the background, but instead show something like

news.ycombinator.com > 2020 > 06 > 14 > Google hides full addresses in URL bar on Chrome 85

This makes it easy to not only see where you are, but also quickly click on a part of the address to go to that hierarchy, or a sibling like yesterdays posts. It makes sense that a forum like this would have a way too see all posts from a day, month, or year.

Of course, most if not all users here are comfortable with URLs so they're probably not the ones that would benefit the most. But I think most common users, the ones who Google everything instead of typing in an address, would use the breadcrumb bar while today they probably see the URL as some weird text string they have little interest in or understanding of.

While we often create a mental map between some sort of logical hierarchy and the segments of the url this doesn't have to be the case. A specific domain should be authority on this, not he general-purpose tool used to access it.

There was an extension in Firefox that used to do exactly this. Seems like it did not survive the Mozilla War Against Addons, unfortunately.