Sometimes there are “advancements” in computing that make me feel old.
I’ve been avoiding the combined address/search bar thing for some time, but the latest Safari update forced me to confront the issue. I’ve been trying to use it for a few weeks now and I can’t get used to it. It makes me feel substantially less productive. It’s one of these things where your brain is just wired to work a different way from the tool.
Entering a website address is apparently now considered a special case, a thing of the past. Now you search for everything. Searching is the common case.
My problem is, for me, entering a website address is the common case. At work, I usually know exactly what address I want to hit. Or if I want to search for something it’s on the corporate network–not google–so I’ll hit the intranet search server.
Now I have to remember to put a trailing slash on everything. I’m typing an extra character in the common case.
Back in my day we used to type http:// in front of everything. Sometimes we used to specify an alternative port! Or even another protocol! And we liked it!