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The "http://" prefix to regular consumer websites is unnecessary and only complicates. Anyways 99% of the sites people visit use the HTTP protocol, so why do you have to tell the browser that? It should guess it!

I want to hide the "http://" prefix everywhere, in the address/location bar URL, on Hyperlink tips, in the status bar, basically everywhere in a browser.

Any Firefox Add-on to do this? Any other way for another browser?

HopelessN00b
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Robin Rodricks
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  • Where do you want to hide it? In the browser address bar, or somewhere else? And as others have pointed out, you don't have to tell the browser that so it's not entirely clear what you're after here. – The Archetypal Paul May 11 '09 at 09:48
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    @hmemcpy's answer indicates that this can be done, but why? – ceejayoz May 11 '09 at 13:38
  • "why do you have to tell the browser that" <--- you don't. All modern browsers will assume http:// if you do not explicitly type it. Like everyone else, I'm not entirely sure what your reason is for wanting to do this. I don't see what you could gain from it. – ThatGraemeGuy Sep 03 '10 at 13:23

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There is a great add-on for Firefox called Locationbar² that does just what you want (and some!). One of its main features is to break the URL into breadcrumbs.

In the options dialog you can specify what protocols you'd like to hide:

enter image description here

Here is what mine looks like:

enter image description here

Bart De Vos
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Igal Tabachnik
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The HTTP:// string is not a prefix of the URL, it's part of the URL. Which is why you can't (and shouldn't) hide it, since the application is displaying the URL.

Sietse
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99% might use the HTTP protocol, but there's a lot more than 1% that use HTTP over TLS (ie HTTPS) and they're on different ports, so the browser needs to know which port to open.

Also, the browser does guess it.

Richard Gadsden
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Google Chrome 6 now does precisely what you asked for. It was released yesterday (2 September 2010). This question in Chrome 6

Richard Gadsden
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Most browser do guess at it. If you enter an address without HTTP:// prefix it will add it on for you.

It would be a browser feature to hide this, and as far as I know, no browsers offer this.

Sam Cogan
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There is no way to do this, that I know of, on any of the modern browsers.

  • What a pity! Wish someone would write a Firefox addon to do just that! It would be the most popular addon of all time and they might just consider implementing it into the browser. – Robin Rodricks May 11 '09 at 10:19
  • This is a GOOD THING. The ability for web sites to change what is appearing in the address bar would just make phishing so much easier. – Richard May 11 '09 at 12:25
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    Richard, I think Jeremy is after a client-side setting for this. For example, with Google Chrome, http is displayed grey, whilst https is displayed green (or red) - I think he wants to take this a step further and simply only show non-HTTP protocols (and possibly using an icon rather than the code/abbr). – Peter Boughton May 11 '09 at 12:32
  • @Peter: Exactly! – Robin Rodricks May 12 '09 at 05:24
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If you're unhappy with the browsers out there, roll your own. Firefox and Chrome are both open-source, so most of the work is already done for you.

gWaldo
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My vote is definitely for the new Google Chrome. It will hide the "http://"; however, show https, ftp or any other protocol that you feed it.

Braden
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  • Please add comments to specific questions. This is not a forum; please use the answer button only to Answer the initial Question. Thank you. – Chris S Sep 03 '10 at 13:02
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Just thought I'd add that Firefox 7 now does this by default also -- though it's still in beta.

enter image description here

M. Tibbits
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I'm guessing you're thinking something like the iPhone css tricks which scroll the page down a dozen pixels to obscure the url header.

This is not possible with any browser that is currently shipping, even if it was, you wouldn't be able to control that setting via the javascript DOM.

The closest I can think is with a javascript driven popup, which can suggest to the browser that it should hide the url bar. However popups are very much out of vogue.

Dave Cheney
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