Tag search: URL

An early-stage version of Google Chrome’s Canary build includes the ability to hide the URL bar, providing an extra 30 pixels of room to browse, but consequently leaving the user vulnerable to phishing attacks.

Luckily, it’s not a default feature so users have the option between keeping the URL bar, and removing it. But how important is the URL bar to users? And would they really notice if it was gone?

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Wikipedia: “URL normalization (or URL canonicalization) is the process by which URLs are modified and standardized in a consistent manner. The goal of the normalization process is to transform a URL into a normalized or canonical URL so it is possible to determine if two syntactically different URLs may be equivalent.”

Canonical URLs have had a lot of press during the last year since Google started ‘supporting’ them in order to combat duplicate content issues – amongst other things. I’m going to look at how carnonical URLs should be used, and what the consequences can be if used incorrectly.

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Marty McFly once said: “Yeah, well, history is gonna change”, and if you’re using one of the latest Gecko 2 based web browsers, such as Firefox 4, Thunderbird 3.3 or SeaMonkey 2.1, then this just might be the case for you.

Ignoring the fact I wanted to get a Back to the Future quote on the blog, it seems that the new JavaScript methods that these browsers will support; will allow developers to make changes to the URL bar without refreshing the browsers or directing the user to the new URL. It also means that you could ‘inject’ browser history to the viewer, but we are sure there’s been some thought around the security of this.

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