1386538 - Set initial tab title as new URL's hostname (without protocol or "www.")

Status: REOPENED

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Bug 1366870 changed new page's initial tab title to the new URL's hostname (minus protocol and "www." prefix), but bug 1367630 changed the initial tab title to include the new URL's full path.

Was that change intentional? In bug 1366870 comment 17, Philipp Sackl recommended showing the domain name instead of the full URL, but we didn't discuss showing the new URL minus the protocol and "www." prefix.

Other browsers' initial tab titles for comparison:

* Firefox 54 uses "Connecting...".
* IE11 uses the same "hostname without www" placeholder (and as implemented in Firefox 55 by bug 1366870).
* Edge uses "Blank page".
* Chrome uses "Loading..." on Windows and "Untitled" on Mac. * Safari uses "Untitled".

Comment 1

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to Chris Peterson [:cpeterson] from comment #0)
> Bug 1366870 changed new page's initial tab title to the new URL's hostname
> (minus protocol and "www." prefix), but bug 1367630 changed the initial tab
> title to include the new URL's full path.
> 
> Was that change intentional? In bug 1366870 comment 17, Philipp Sackl
> recommended showing the domain name instead of the full URL, but we didn't
> discuss showing the new URL minus the protocol and "www." prefix.

It was intentional from my side, in order to have initial labels be consistent with labels for titleless pages.

Comment 2

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Attachment: Bug 1386538 - Set initial tab title as new URL's hostname (without protocol or "www.").

We currently show the full URL without protocol or "www.", but this is noisy technical information and can be truncated because long URLs overflowsthe tab width. For URLs without a path, we currently show "mozilla.org/" with a slash, which is a little confusing.

With this patch, loading "https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/" would show just "mozilla.org" instead of "mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/".

Review commit: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/163754/diff/#index_header
See other reviews: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/163754/

Comment 3

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

We currently show the full URL without protocol or "www.", but this is noisy technical information and can be truncated because long URLs overflowsthe tab width. For URLs without a path, we currently show "mozilla.org/" with a slash, which is a little confusing.

With this patch, loading "https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/" would show just "mozilla.org" instead of "mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/".

Comment 4

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Comment on attachment 8892777 [details]
Bug 1386538 - Set initial tab title as new URL's hostname (without protocol or "www.").

https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/163754/#review169136

See my previous comment. I don't think continuing after the host is noise for titleless pages, it's valuable information even if the label may overflow.

Comment 5

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

OK. I'll close this bug.

Comment 6

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

I don't feel very strongly about not doing this (hence canceling the review rather than denying it), but we should carefully consider the titleless case. Perhaps get more input from Philipp?

Comment 7

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Hi Philipp, I'd like to get your UX feedback on tab labels for two different scenarios:

> 1. What should be the temporary tab label when loading a new page before the HTML <title> is known?

For comparison, here are the temporary tab labels that other browsers show when loading URL "https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/":

* Firefox 54 and earlier show "Connecting...".
* Firefox 55 and later show "mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/".
* Chrome shows "Loading..." on Windows and "Untitled" on Mac.
* Safari shows "Untitled".
* Edge shows "Blank page".
* IE11 shows an abbreviated domain name "mozilla.org" without the "http://" protocol or "www." prefix. I implemented this IE11 scheme in Firefox 55 (bug 1366870), but it was changed before Firefox 55 shipped (bug 1367630) to show a longer URL path "mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/" (but still without the protocol or "www.").

With my new patch in this bug, Firefox implements the IE11 scheme again to just show "mozilla.org". The long URLs we show in 55+ today are often truncated in the tab label.

> 2. What should be the tab label for web pages without an HTML <title>?

For comparison, here are the fallback tab labels that other browsers use when loading a test page with out an HTML <title> such as http://web.mit.edu/bzbarsky/www/testcases/titles/no-title.html:

* Firefox 54 and earlier show "http://web.mit.edu/bzbarsky/www/testcases/titles/no-title.html"
* Firefox 55 and later show "web.mit.edu/bzbarsky/www/testcases/titles/no-title.html"
* Chrome shows "web.mit.edu/bzbarsky/www/testcases/titles/no-title.html"
* Edge shows "web.mit.edu"
* IE11 shows "web.mit.edu"

If the test URL had a "www." prefix (like "http://www.example.net/no-title.html") instead of the uncommon "web." prefix, then:

* Firefox 54 and earlier would show "http://www.example.net/no-title.html"
* Firefox 55 and later would show "example.net/no-title.html"
* Chrome would show "www.example.net/no-title.html"
* Edge would show "example.net"
* IE11 would show "example.net"

> My personal preferences:

1. For the temporary tab labels, I like the abbreviated domain names that IE11 shows: "mozilla.org" instead of "mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/". Users can recognize the abbreviated domain names more quickly than the long URLs, which are often truncated to fit the tab width.

2. For pages without an HTML <title>, I like the full URLs (without the http:// protocol) that Chrome shows: "www.example.net/no-title.html" instead of "example.net/no-title.html". For these pages, the "www." prefix is meaningful where it is not for the temporary tab labels.

Comment 8

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

btw, my current patch doesn't handle "no <title>" pages as a special case and thus shows "web.mit.edu" and "example.net" for the example URLs in comment 7. This is the same behavior as Edge and IE11.

Comment 9

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Clear a needinfo that is pending on an inactive user.

Inactive users most likely will not respond; if the missing information is essential and cannot be collected another way, the bug maybe should be closed as INCOMPLETE.

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.