In Chrome 86, we’re going to experiment with how URLs are shown in the address bar on desktop platforms. Our goal is to understand — through real-world usage — whether showing URLs this way helps users realize they’re visiting a malicious website, and protects them from phishing and social engineering attacks.
A shame they didn’t follow Jake’s proposal (as talked about in HTTP 203 and pictured below) though, as that pleases both a non-technical as a technical audience.
Screengrab of Jake’s Proposal
But then again I can imagine that there’s no good reason to show a bunch of seemingly random characters – which us developers can parse and interpret – to regular users like my mum. Most web-related support calls from her end up with me asking “are you on bla.com” with the rest of the URL not being entirely irrelevant, or me instructing her to “go to foo.com and search for X” instead of spelling out the whole URL.
Chrome is about to hide parts of the URL →
(And yes, there is an option to “Always show full URLs”)