"Hide toolbar" makes users more vulnerable to phishing attacks

[markstos]

When the toolbar is hidden, users can't see the URL to confirm they are connected to the correct site and not a fake one.

One option to make this safer is for the URL to appear when the domain changes long enough to read the domain name... not just a flash, but 5 or 10 seconds.

Another option is to have a minimal footer that shows the URL at all times.

The final option is to update the settings UX to provide a warning when this mode is enabled that safety is being reduced.

[ficd0]

I absolutely agree. However, this may be tricky to implement in a way that respects the reason why someone may have enabled hidden toolbar in the first place; a popup like this may be frustrating for them. If the URL was to appear on new page loads, it may be better to have it be a more minimal and unobtrusive appearance than the entire toolbar. I think the issue with a minimal footer is that users are less likely to have their eyes drawn to the bottom of their screen in the first place; usually, when you navigate to a new web page, you are looking at the top.

So I think the best solution here would be a minimal version of the toolbar that appears for a few seconds on loading a new page, with the TLD and FLD highlighted, so for example if you were to open a page login.google.com.indexmail03.to, the link could be highlighted like login.google.com.indexmail03.to. This would also help users, at a quick glance, have a bettter idea of whether the page they are on is legitimate.

[markstos]

I think the issue with a minimal footer is that users are less likely to have their eyes drawn to the bottom of their screen in the first place; usually, when you navigate to a new web page, you are looking at the top.

I studied graphic design and this is correct-- people tend to scan a page from the top down. But at the same time, some people aren't going to check the URL for phishing no matter where it is, while people interested to check if they are really on the expected website can glance in either direction. I don't have data, but I'm not sure how much top vs bottom position would matter in practice.

Here's an example of a minimal footer used by Qutebrowser. You can see that besides the URL, they also use it for some other things: You can provide status about different modes like Cognito/Private, provide the scroll percentage and provide loading status updates.

I used to use this bottom status with Qutebrowser. What I liked about this is because people do look at the top of the page first, that prime real estate was reserved for the page content itself, while the bottom status bar was there for reference if I needed it.

[ficd0]

In that case, I wonder if the existing footer (the one that appears when you hover your cursor over a link) could be repurposed for this. While it already does (briefly) display the URL being loaded, it's only for the duration of your request, and is then immediately overwritten by messages like 'TLS handshake', etc. So perhaps keeping this structure but simply extending the amount of time the target URL remains shown in the footer may be a good solution, because it wouldn't be a major UI change or conflict in any way with the existing design philosophy of Zen (not to imply that your suggestions "conflict", but there would definitely be less room for disagreement from folks considering this UI element already exists)

[markstos]

Re-using the existing footer sounds good me. Even if it only stays around long enough for those who are concerned to read the domain name they just connected to. Bonus points if it also displays icon to indicate the level of trust like the main URL bar does.