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I don't understand what this is referring to WRT Firefox. In Firefox I'm seeing the full URL right now, and have never not seen a full URL, and have never needed to configure anything. By "insanity" is this just referring to the way that Firefox renders the TLD and 2LD in black and the rest in gray? What about:config setting is this obliquely referencing?

EDIT: anyone care to explain the downvotes?

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Firefox hides the "http://" and only shows a crossed out padlock icon.

On secure sites, the full URL is displayed (including "https://").

I haven't noticed (I guess I don't visit http sites?), but that's quite different from the behavior the article is describing, where every component except the TLD and 2LD are completely absent.

http://neverssl.com to try it

The Firefox changes came shortly after Chrome started mess with URLs and so it looked like Firefox was going to follow Chrome's lead on this. However, Firefox never really got further than hiding the "http://" protocol, and this can be changed by setting "browser.urlbar.trimURLs" to false.

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