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I recently went crazy trying to figure out why the currently named "status bar" wasn't showing up. I kept looking through settings/menus for "link preview on hover" or anything along those lines.

I think "Show Status Bar" is a bad name.

  1. It doesn't display a status -- a link is not a status (especially one you haven't clicked on)
  2. It is not always showing
  3. If one doesn't already know it's called status bar, it is NOT the first thing one thinks that it would be called (see other "bug" reports about this: https://orionfeedback.org/d/4105-url-preview-on-link-hover-not-appearing/10, https://orionfeedback.org/d/5259-reduce-link-preview-confusion)

No new usage, just a rename for better accuracy and discoverability

  • A good compromise between retaining historical accuracy and helping discoverability could be to name the menu item "Show Status Bar on Link Hover"

BTW, for some context, Safari calls it a "Status Bar"
Safari calls it the "Status bar" because in the past, there was a window.status API that could set the text of that bar. It has since been deprecated and basically no browser supports it now.See https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/status

And, on chromium, normally you cannot disable it: https://superuser.com/questions/239202/turn-off-the-link-hover-statusbar-in-google-chrome
and on firefox, seems to be only disableable with userChrome.css

A possible fix is to remove that menu item and always show the status bar, but I'm not sure if thats a feature that some people like.

    Agreed. Just because Safari still calls it a status bar doesn't mean Orion should. Makes no sense. I'd be fine with removing the menu item altogether but probably best to keep it and rename it as suggested. In case some people want to turn such a sensible safety feature off for some strange reason.

    My biggest gripe is with discoverability. Given that the Status Bar isn't used for anything else, one could also rename it more specifically to "Link Hover Status Bar" and retain historical naming with increased discoverability

    Opposite argument is also true, Status bar has been a staple name for this browser elements since first browsers.

    There is even a Wikipedia entry for it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_bar

    How are other browsers calling it?

    • laiz replied to this.

      Vlad
      I haven't encountered a single browser that does not call it status bar. Of course there might be a chromium fork I haven't tried. It's also worth noting that Chrome and Firefox have hidden the entire setting from the average user a few years ago. Toggling it on Firefox requires editing the custom CSS, and Chrome has a flag that needs to be edited.

      It seems the default behavior of it being enabled is preferred by nearly every user and the problem arises from it being easy to accidentally toggle while going through the View settings. Removing the shortcut alleviated the problem slightly. Nevertheless, I'd argue the best solution would be:

      1. Keep calling it the status bar and keep having it enabled by default
      2. Move the setting from View to the Appearance tab in the settings window where all other bars reside (Toolbar, Bookmarks bar, Sidebar)
      3. Moving it to the Appearance tab would also provide more real estate for a description, making it possible to e.g. call it Show Status Bar (Link information)

        A good compromise between retaining historical accuracy and helping discoverability could be to name the menu item "Show Status Bar on Link Hover"

        9 days later

        This seems kinda broken:

        it's now:
        Show Status Bar on Link Hover
        Hide Status Bar

        I would expect the hide label to be "Hide Status Bar on Link Hover"

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