Re: [whatwg/url] Omitting www might be confusing for users (#568)

A Chrome colleague ran a similar analysis on an Alexa list in 2018 and found smaller numbers (2.6% didn't resolve on www and 0.6% didn't resolve on the bare registrable domain). But these are different datasets so I guess it's not surprising that the numbers are different.

Ultimately it's a product decision: simplifying information can cause confusion for some people and alleviate confusion for other people. While it's true that there is not a direct risk of `www.example.com` spoofing `example.com` or vice versa, making the URL simpler may generally help people notice and understand URLs better.

I don't really feel convinced that anything needs to change in the spec, since it's already a "may", allowing browsers to make their own product decisions. Maybe it would be reasonable to add a caveat at the end of the section to note that there are tradeoffs to these simplifications -- maybe something like this?

> Simplifying components of the URL can cause confusion for some users in some contexts -- for example, users might interpret a URL with hidden components as the full URL. Browsers may consider using visual distinctions between full URLs and simplified URLs, and/or making full URLs visible in a secondary UI surface or with a setting.

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Received on Wednesday, 6 January 2021 05:26:24 UTC