Google has removed the http:// from new development builds of it’s Chrome browser.
The change was noticed when a user posted a bug report in the Chromium issue tracker, to which a Chrome developer replied and stated that this is a new feature, and not a bug.
Currently when you copy and paste a the URL from these development builds, the http:// will be missing, but this is expected to change in the new future.
https:// and ftp:// are still displayed for security reasons, but some argue this is inconsistent.
This feature will eventually make its way into the standard browser.
chrome story wrote on April 20, 2010 at 4:07 pm
there is a huge discussion happening in the chrome developers discussion forum about this change, there are many ( geeks ) who didnt like this change !
Tiago Sá wrote on April 20, 2010 at 7:18 pm
My Firefox does this for years! To all prefixes, ftp, https, chrome, http, everything. Talk about geek!
Seriously, there’s an awesome extension called LocationBar2. It adds incredible functionality, not just hiding the prefix, that no other browser has, and it’s absolutely fantastic.
Alex wrote on April 21, 2010 at 4:40 pm
@chrome story
I can understand the ‘geek’ outcry, but I am not sure it’s really an issue. As long as the browser tells users that they are using protocols other than http, it can just be assumed that they are using http.
The majority of users will never use anything other than http or https, meaning that most users will only ever see https, which is important (and it may make people notice this more), especially with banking and e-commerce sites.
Tiago Sá wrote on April 22, 2010 at 1:06 am
The way firefox does it, without hiding the protocol, is to have the favicon background change for https. Older versions had a yellow location bar for https sites, it’s quite nostalgic, now that I think of it. The way I have it configured, with LocationBar2, for Firefox, is to hide all protocols, unless the location bar is selected. HTTP is normal, HTTPS has the favicon background thing, FTP is obvious because the layout of the page is unique, data protocol is irrelevant, and so is file protocol, and about, chrome and other stuff like that is shown, even when the location bar is not selected.