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Comment by jesstaa | Hacker News Reader

Chrome did this and it's problematic. When a user copies a url they are either required to add the http:// themselves, or firefox could do what chrome did and automatically add the http:// to the url when you copy it. This is a problem if you just want to copy the domain name and now you have to remove the added http://

There is no advantage to this kind of change.

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In Opera, it's only a cosmetic change as long as you don't click the address bar. When you click it, the full url is displayed and selected, along with the http://, so no problems to copy.

(It is a bit disturbing though because it goes a bit too far, and cuts the parameters. for example, if I activate it, right now all I see is "news.ycombinator.com/reply", I won't see the id after. Though I guess most users won't care.)

Agree. This change is not one that will have a net positive impact. You do not need to type http:// in the bar anyway so not showing will not suddenly boost readability.I would much rather they copied some of the ideas from Locationbar². The Domain highlighting is especially useful.

I haven't typed the http:// in Firefox for ages, seems they already add it automatically.

He's talking about when you select the URL to copy it to another application, say an email or instant message. At that time you need the http:// so the other app knows it's an URL. Which means you're putting something in the clipboard which is not visible in the user's selection. Which is weird and bad.

Most apps seem to recognise URLs without http by now, though.

There are at least couple of advantages:

- less noise in the address bar

- reminds the average user that they don't have to type http:// to make a url work

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