Direct Navigation Returns! Do You Want Your Address Bar Back?

claudedauman · Jun 24, 2016

I was able to achieve direct navigation and to convert my search bar back into an address bar. I have escaped Google's walled garden! Care to join me?

Many of you recall those heady days when Mozilla entered our lives and empowered us with the freedom to directly navigate the Internet. Prior to Mozilla, we were confined within the walled gardens of AOL, Prodigy and CompuServe.

Up until a number of years ago, our browsers had an address bar, much like the image above. Several years ago, the search engine giants decided it’s in their best interest to replace the address bar with a search bar. By replacing the address bar with a search bar, and by making it nearly impossible to switch it back to an address bar, they once again had us confined to a walled garden.

vivaldi · Jun 24, 2016

Or you just switch your default search engine to Duckduckgo and use shortcodes when you wish to use other search engines in a non walled garden way.

claudedauman · Jun 24, 2016

Thank you Vivaldi.

You could but, if I'm understanding correctly, you still wouldn't have an address bar allowing for direct navigation.

usernamex · Jun 24, 2016

Can I ask why this is new news? It has always been possible to tweak, and tweak I have.

claudedauman · Jun 24, 2016

usernamex said:
Can I ask why this is new news? It has always been possible to tweak, and tweak I have.

If you have already tweaked direct navigation please do show us. You can use screencast-o-matic to record a video, like I've done. I'd love to see your direct navigation in action. Thanks.

HotKey · Jun 24, 2016

Am I missing something here? Since when don't browsers have an address bar? Or are you talking about mobile phones?

usernamex · Jun 24, 2016

@claudedauman Please provide your OS and Browser versions, that might clear things up : smile :

claudedauman · Jun 24, 2016

HotKey said:
Am I missing something here? Since when don't browsers have an address bar? Or are you talking about mobile phones?

Thank you for your comment.

The address bar on your computer is now a search bar. With the search bar, when you type in a keyword it will take you to your default search engine. With my system, when you type a keyword into the address bar, the .com is added and you are taken directly to the website. This is how it was before the address bar was replaced with a search bar.

They both look the same but function very differently.

claudedauman · Jun 24, 2016

usernamex said:
@claudedauman Please provide your OS and Browser versions, that might clear things up : smile :

Thank you for your comments.

Mac OS X El Capitan running Google Chrome

HotKey · Jun 24, 2016

claudedauman said:
The address bar on your computer is now a search bar..

claudedauman said:
Mac OS X El Capitan running Google Chrome

Ok, that clears things up, thanks. Politely bowing out of this..I am not familiar with the Mac OS.

claudedauman · Jun 24, 2016

HotKey said:
Ok, that clears things up, thanks. Politely bowing out of this..I am not familiar with the Mac OS.

Thank you. I appreciate your comments.

lakraman · Jun 24, 2016

This is interesting. And the address bar will work very well for businesses to get type-in traffic. But what about the businesses who don't have a .com?

If I type in "books", the address bar will take me to books.com. But if you owned Books.shop, wouldn't you lose out to B&N?

And this will make all the non .com domain names worthless. Wouldn't it?

At least with the search bar, both you and B&N will have the chance to grab my attention.

What do you think? Does my reasoning make sense?

claudedauman · Jun 24, 2016

lakraman said:
This is interesting. And the address bar will work very well for businesses to get type-in traffic. But what about the businesses who don't have a .com?

If I type in "books", the address bar will take me to books.com. But if you owned Books.shop, wouldn't you lose out to B&N?

And this will make all the non .com domain names worthless. Wouldn't it?

At least with the search bar, both you and B&N will have the chance to grab my attention.

What do you think? Does my reasoning make sense?

Thank you for your comment. It does make sense and it's much appreciated.

The address bar will favor .com. if only a keyword is entered. As the vast majority of major businesses use a dot-com some might consider this to be desirable.

If you did type the complete URL into the address bar (eg. Books.shop) the address bar will take you to Books.shop. Interestingly, I typed Books.shop into my search bar in Safari and it didn't recognize it as a domain name and took me to Google search. I've noticed this happening with other new gTLDs too.

lakraman · Jun 24, 2016

claudedauman said:
Thank you for your comment. It does make sense and it's much appreciated.

The address bar will favor .com. if only a keyword is entered. As the vast majority of major businesses use a dot-com some might consider this to be desirable.

If you did type the complete URL into the address bar (eg. Books.shop) the address bar will take you to Books.shop. Interestingly, I typed Books.shop into my search bar in Safari and it didn't recognize it as a domain name and took me to Google search. I've noticed this happening with other new gTLDs too.

The browsers need to update themselves to recognize the new gTLDs.

The other question is, what about the ccTLDs? If you were in Germany and typed in the word, would the address bar default to word.de or will it still direct to word.com when word.com exists?

I do like the idea of the address bar. It will give domain sellers another reason to pitch their .com domains to the end users. But if, like in the example, a German prefers his .de sites, I think he'd rather go straight to .de than to a .com.

Now of course you never know who wants what. So would you add the option for the user to choose his default TLD?

claudedauman · Jun 24, 2016

lakraman said:
The browsers need to update themselves to recognize the new gTLDs.

The other question is, what about the ccTLDs? If you were in Germany and typed in the word, would the address bar default to word.de or will it still direct to word.com when word.com exists?

I do like the idea of the address bar. It will give domain sellers another reason to pitch their .com domains to the end users. But if, like in the example, a German prefers his .de sites, I think he'd rather go straight to .de than to a .com.

Now of course you never know who wants what. So would you add the option for the user to choose his default TLD?

Thank you for your excellent comment. Yes, it would be possible for a user to select their default TLD.

lakraman · Jun 25, 2016

Awesome!

I wish you all the best in this and am looking forward to when you launch it to the public.

Name Trader · Jun 25, 2016

I'm with Claude. I've never liked it since the navigation bar became the search bar. I also have the same suspicions as Claude

claudedauman · Jun 25, 2016

stub said:
I'm with Claude. I've never liked it since the navigation bar became the search bar. I also have the same suspicions as Claude

Thank you for your comment Stub. I appreciate your feedback.

claudedauman · Jun 25, 2016

lakraman said:
Awesome!

I wish you all the best in this and am looking forward to when you launch it to the public.

Thank you.

Doron Vermaat · Jun 25, 2016

claudedauman said:
Thank you for your comment.

The address bar on your computer is now a search bar. With the search bar, when you type in a keyword it will take you to your default search engine. With my system, when you type a keyword into the address bar, the .com is added and you are taken directly to the website. This is how it was before the address bar was replaced with a search bar.

They both look the same but function very differently.

Why would anyone want that?

Name Trader · Jun 25, 2016

Doron Vermaat said:
Why would anyone want that?

Hi Doron. Did you read his first post in full? I thought Claude explained that quite well.

Doron Vermaat · Jun 25, 2016

stub said:
Hi Doron. Did you read his first post in full? I thought Claude explained that quite well.

Yep, still don't get it. Too many domains are parked to make direct navigation work for me. Seriously, the only people I can imagine that benefit from direct navigation are... domainers!

And privacy and freedom? I guess i'm not paranoid or old enough to care about that. I want to find what i'm looking for which, 99 out of 100 times is not my search query + .com stuck behind it. It doesn't work like that anymore especially since since most of the leading sites use brandable domains instead of EMD..

frank-germany · Jun 25, 2016

my browsers all have navigation bars

but if thats true I understand the decline in parking income
no more direct typing traffic
w/o searchengine listing

that always was a nightmare to me
welcome to the future

claudedauman · Jun 25, 2016

Doron Vermaat said:
Yep, still don't get it. Too many domains are parked to make direct navigation work for me. Seriously, the only people I can imagine that benefit from direct navigation are... domainers!

And privacy and freedom? I guess i'm not paranoid or old enough to care about that. I want to find what i'm looking for which, 99 out of 100 times is not my search query + .com stuck behind it. It doesn't work like that anymore especially since since most of the leading sites use brandable domains instead of EMD..

Doron,

I appreciate your reply and value your opinion. I'm taking this poll because I understand there are varying opinions here. I understand where you're coming from.

In my opinion, I'm not certain the privacy and freedom issues are based on paranoia or age. I suspect that many of us feel less comfortable with Google than we once were. The privacy and freedom issues might have less to do with the sites which we are visiting, and more to do with not being forced to allow them to conceivable monetize every query we enter into their search bar.

claudedauman · Jun 25, 2016

frank-germany said:
my browsers all have navigation bars

but if thats true I understand the decline in parking income
no more direct typing traffic
w/o searchengine listing

that always was a nightmare to me
welcome to the future

Frank,

Thank you for your comment. The search bar looks just like the address bar but it functions quite differently.

I hope the future of the Internet is one with a more even playing field. Perhaps the return of the address bar can play a part in that.

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