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Comment by LoSboccacc | Hacker News Reader

> From the very beginning it was intended that users would follow links, not type in URLs.

so, about that

    4.6 Locators are human transcribable.

   Users can copy Internet locators from one medium to another (such as
   voice to paper, or paper to keyboard) without loss or corruption of
   information.  This process is not required to be comfortable.

you can't copy a page title into a client and expect it to find the right resource, now, do you?

accessing the URL is listed as one of the fundamental use case for them, and for good reasons, detailed elsewhere in the same rfc

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I agree with most this... but have somewhat of a counter point to "you can't copy a page title".

You (often) can copy a page title into a client (Google) and expect it to find the right resource. This is usually done with articles, etc.

Even your comment provides a perfect example - you didn't link to RFC 1736, but the text "Locators are human transcribable" is unique enough that the first Google result is correct.

So you didn't have to provide a URL to lead someone to this page, just 'enough' unique text for it to be findable.

Which is kind of amazing - and maybe not what the original RFC intended.

counterpoint: https://i.imgur.com/ORLixJa.png

none of the result here are pointer to the source I've used

sure the content is the same, but the resource isn't, if anything this demonstrates how easy is to misled a user, directing him on a different resource thinking it's the same.

compare with stack overflow result:

https://i.imgur.com/maJi47G.png

luckily prominent sites get pushed on top of the result queue (had to cut it because it was submersed by advertisement) but the attack vector is evident.

>You (often) can copy a page title into a client (Google) and expect it to find the right resource. This is usually done with articles, etc.

So web was designed with using Google in mind? woot

> you can't copy a page title into a client and expect it to find the right resource, now, do you?

You can type it into Google, though...

mhm https://i.imgur.com/maJi47G.png

My mother opens every webpage by typing the URL into google

Because web browsers default "home screen" has a large text box by default. People think that's where the address goes, but not really, that's actually a web page which does search. Shame on us for designing it that way.

But on another note, it will be the day when your mother (or anyone else for that matter) types in 'www.walmart.com' and actually goes to 'www.target.com' (names taken from other examples that I've seen on Twitter).

That is already happening

I made a new webpage for my father, and my mother cannot open it, since google does not know about that and there are no links to it.

Maybe Firefox should change the default screen from containing search to containing the address bar instead. That way if you type in a proper URL there it should go directly to it rather than doing a search.

Not going to happen, that very search box is Firefox's main source of income.

There is unfortunately a tax on stupidity, and in this day and age it is paid with one's personal data to multinationals.

Thank you.

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