I just revisited this article since you linked to it today. I think I now understand why the address bar is totally broken for several of the major browsers: it’s because only a handful of people like us ever use it! This must include the developers for these browsers (or they don’t eat their own dogfood), since they’re also oblivious to the problem.

Internet Explorer: The address bar automatically highlights when you click it … sometimes. Sometimes it doesn’t, such as in the first 10 or so seconds after it comes up. It’s a weird little bug that’s been there for as long as I can remember. In older versions, hitting CTRL+L, the standard keybinding for focusing on the address bar, IE would pop up a separate modal window for entering the URL into a plain, dumb textbox, rather than focus the address bar. How did that even get implemented?

Next, try selecting part of the URL before the address bar is focused. For example, if a regular text box is not focused and you click and drag inside it, you’ll select text across the drag points. Not so in the address bar. Your drag is ignored and the entire thing is highlighted. You have to focus the address bar, and then select the substring you want to edit/copy.

The address bar is itty-bitty. Editing a long URL is a real pain in the ass. I can only assume no one on the IE team at Microsoft has ever tried to do this (or they’re all using Firefox or Chrome for actual browsing).

All my machines have useful host names on the network (named after Greek gods and Game of Thrones characters), and it’s not unusual for me to run little webservers on them for quick access (e.g. python SimpleHTTPServer). On good browsers I can type “hostname:8001/” to visit one of these temporary servers (port 8001 in this case). The slash hints to the browser that it’s a URL and a search shouldn’t be performed. Not so in Internet Explorer. It will immediately search for that as a term. I need to type in the “http://” part if I want it to treat it as a URL. If it doesn’t have a TDL (.com, .net, etc.) it doesn’t think it’s a URL. (Outlook has a really annoying similar bug.)

Android Browser: You know, that weird Chrome port to Android. I don’t use IE casually, so all that is only an annoyance when I’m doing webdev, but I do use the Android browser regularly. It has most of the problems as above, but instead of searching for “hostname:8080/” it will try “www.hostname.com:8080”, which is harder to edit, especially on a phone. I think they’ve fixed it on recent releases, but thanks to Android fragmentation (hi Samsung!) I don’t have access to the fixes.

(Side note: it looks like once you’ve hit a certain number of comments, the preview stops working, probably because it wants to place it on another comments page.)

@ John:

Please keep in mind the following:

1. You are responding to a blog post that is 2 years old
2. Said blog post is also written tongue in cheek – you would know that if you read my other posts about teaching technology to beginners, user friendly UI design and etc…
3. You read an angry nerd rant and automatically assumed it is about your mom???

You should strongly consider how much a completely random, incoherent post by some nobody on the internet should matter to you. You will never get back the two minutes you spent angrily typing this comment. Just something to ponder. :)

I have a career in data security, so these gravely serious issues that frustrate you do not apply to me. I would, however, comment that the fact that you think people that don’t know the Internet (with a capital “I”, stupid) as well as you are stupid is ridiculous. That is my mom you are talking about. Just because she isn’t as familiar as someone with your superiority doesn’t make her stupid. You should strongly consider how much something like this should matter to you.

@ Alex:
This is really only true if you have some of the tablet features enabled, where it puts the check boxes next to your folder items and highlights everything… you can disable that crap and make it behave normally though.

@ Vlad:
*loser, you loser.

this. is. hilarious.
& too true.
ahaha, I definitely feel your pain.

@ Andy:

You know what I hate Andy? Abominable sacks of shit that think their privileged un-wiped asses are too good to actually learn how to use the most basic tool a human being needs to use in order to survive in the twenty first century. If you don’t think learning how to use a computer is one of the most important things in your life, please get the fuck off the internet. Go live in a forest with the rest of the ludite, tree humping hippies and stop wasting my bandwidth. There is no place for you and your ilk in civilized society. You are a burden on those around you who do care to keep up with technological progress. You however fell of the curve – you will be left behind.

Your repugnant idiocy is tainting my RAM with lack of any kind of logic. Please get cancer.

Good day sir.

Also, your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries. I fart in your general direction.

You know what I hate? Assholes who think the only important thing in life is knowing how to use a computer.

Firewall Saga tie in?

@ Zack:
I can see it being easier. If you don’t know com/net/org/etc for the site Googling it actually saves time over trying them all out until you hit the right one.