Location bar: a simple design

Ka-Ping Yee

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Apr 12, 2007, 1:44:16 AM4/12/07

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I mocked up the simple location bar proposal described in
my recent post on the Location Bar thread.

Here it is for your consideration:

Again, the proposal is just two changes to the location bar:

- When focus is outside the URL edit field, most of the URL
is faded out except the significant part (TLD + 1) of the domain.

- Favicons do not appear in the location bar.

Otherwise the location bar looks and behaves just like it
does in today's Firefox.

-- ?!ng

DigDug

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Apr 12, 2007, 2:36:45 PM4/12/07

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Is there a real place to discuss these changes and offer suggestions?
I'll put mine here.

I think that removing the favicon entirely is a bad idea. Its a
feature people have grown accustomed to, so having something there is
important. I'm even less of a fan of only showing something there when
pages are secure. I'd suggest instead of using the favicon, that space
be used to show security stuff all the time. If a page is insecure,
give the user some indication. If it is secure, give the user some
indication (and make sure that the icons are more descriptive than
just a padlock). Maybe buttin-ify it like the Go button, so that users
can click and get a drop down of options like "Page Info" and "Create
a Desktop Shortcut". That way, it isn't spoofable, but its still there
to give a user experience consistent with what people expect, and can
provide more visible access to features and data that often aren't
seen.

Ka-Ping Yee

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Apr 13, 2007, 8:57:20 AM4/13/07

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On Apr 12, 11:36 am, "DigDug" <holden...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Is there a real place to discuss these changes and offer suggestions?
> I'll put mine here.

Sure. I think this is the right place.

> I think that removing the favicon entirely is a bad idea.

Just to be clear, there will still be favicons on the tabs in this
proposal. I'm not sure if you're okay with that, but I wanted to
clarify that favicons won't be gone entirely from the browser. They
just won't appear in the location bar because we don't want attackers
to mess with the appearance of any part of the chrome.

I'm not sure I understand the alternative you're suggesting. If
security info is supposed to appear there in addition to the favicon,
what's to prevent an attacker from confusing users with a favicon that
looks like whatever security indicator we use?

-- ?!ng

Ehsan Akhgari

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May 23, 2007, 2:53:21 AM5/23/07

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On Apr 12, 8:44 am, "Ka-Ping Yee" <goo...@zesty.ca> wrote:
> - Favicons do not appear in the location bar.

Removing the favicon completely breaks a functionality users may be
accustomed to. Currently, when the user is viewing a web page, she
can drag the favicon (or the default icon in case the site lacks one)
to the toolbar's home button to make the current page her home page.
But removing the favicon removes the UI responsible for this action,
and therefore disabled this functionality. Are you sure removing
altogether it is the right choice? I have posted a similar comment on
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=366797> as well.

Ehsan