Microsoft hides www and https in Edge Canary address bar, then restores it
Google launched a controversial change in Chromium and the company's Chrome Canary web browser recently that hides trivial subdomains such as www and the protocol, e.g. http, in the browser's address bar.
Users of the browser may reveal the full address with a double-click, or by right-clicking on the address to check the "always show full URLs" option to restore the display of the full address permanently.
Microsoft's new Edge browser is based on Chromium and changes made to Chromium land in the company's browser as well; this has been the case for the stripping of information from the address bar.
Microsoft launched the change in Microsoft Edge Canary. The browser hid trivial subdomains and the protocol by default after it was updated to the last version.
The company published a post on Reddit in which it asked users of the browser for feedback. Edge Canary users may send feedback to Microsoft straight from the browser. Just select Menu > Help and Feedback > Send Feedback to do so.
Microsoft published a new Edge update soon thereafter that restored the classic functionality. Microsoft Edge Canary shows the full URL of a page once again and published the following statement on Reddit:
Today's Canary update (which just went live) reverts this behavior and puts it behind a feature flag.
You can re-enable the behavior using the flag, Omnibox UI Hide Steady-State URL Subdomains Beyond Registrable Domain
This flag will remain disabled by default while we continue to think about the right implementation here, including when to hide URL components, which components to hide by default, settings to control the behavior, etc.
We are taking into account the feedback in this thread and the feedback submitted through the Microsoft Edge feedback tool as we think through this.
On behalf of the Address Bar team, thank you again for the thoughtful discussion and the feedback! We appreciate it!
Jared
Microsoft reverted the change and added a new flag to the browser that controls it. Users who prefer the stripped look may enable the flag to restore it.
The restored state is not necessarily the final state of the display of URLs in the browser's address bar. Microsoft wants to "think about" the right implementation. It asks for feedback from within Edge to get a better understanding of what users think about it.
Tip: check out how to update Microsoft Edge manually.
Closing Words
The incident highlights one of the main challenges that developers of Chromium-based browsers face, apart from Google of course. It is quite possible that some of the changes made to Chromium slip by unnoticed, and that the company's will have to invest engineering time to reverse changes that they don't want in their browsers. Lastly, it is necessary to keep track of these changes to make sure that they don't break and are still applied in future updates.
Now You:Â hide or show information in the address bar, what is your take? (via Techdows)
Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.
When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?
Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.
I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.
I’m not sure if there is a point in commenting given that comments seem to appear under random posts now, but I’ll try… this comment is for https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
My temporary “solution”, if you can call it that, is to use a VPN (Mullvad in my case) to sign up for and access Reddit via a European connection. I’m doing that with pretty much everything now, at least until the rest of the world catches up with GDPR. I don’t think GDPR is a magical privacy solution but it’s at least a first step.