Chrome, Firefox Experiment With Hidden URL Bars

Netbook and tab users looking at for Sir Thomas More screen space to display content from their favorite websites are getting some help from a pair of popular Internet browsers.

Google and Mozilla are testing versions of the Chrome and Firefox browsers that enshroud the bar accustomed reveal the URL of websites you visit. The features are experimental and it's unclear if they will become part of the mainstream. Web surfers who want to forever know where they are may have security concerns.

Here's a primer on how information technology works, as symptomless as the pros and cons.

In the latest build of Chrome Canary, an early microscope stage variant aimed at developers, you ass enable "Constrict Navigation." Once enabled, you can right-click on any tab and select "Hide the toolbar." The URL will disappear. To construe the address bar again, click on an open tab and the URL relegate bequeath come along underneath.

In Chromium-plate Canary 13, just get in "about:flags" in the Uniform resource locator bar, prize Clayey Navigation and restart the browser. Ars Technica points out the feature only works in the Windows version of Sneaker, and it's not currently supported on Mac OSX.

Mozilla is also experimenting with a similar feature for the Firefox browser. A new add-on for Firefox 4 named LessChrome HD will obliterate all the toolbars below your open tabs whenever they're non in enjoyment. The toolbars reappear when you move your cursor over a pill, or when you replacement tabs. LessChrome HD hind end be installed from the Firefox Add-ons page.

The reward: Hiding the URL allows users of netbooks and tablets to have a bit more quad to display the content of a website.

The drawback: The trade-off can follow dangerous when users don't see the URL of a page — making them easier targets of phishing attacks.

Wolfgang Gruener of Conceivably Tech notes that once you are at the web site you want, at that place's no need to permanently showing the address, unless you are worried about surety.

Firefox and Chromium-plate check together 43 percent of the browser securities industry (StatCounter), and then they could advertise for a less ubiquitous URL bar. But Microsoft, which holds the other half of the market with Internet Explorer, is showing no intention to rent you hide the URL bar any time soon.

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