It's about the principle. www is a valid subdomain.
Browsers are supposed to be as unopinionated as possible since they are browsers, not mediators, and their job is to implement the standards of the web.
No, but I want my browser to notify me that its blocking popups rather than just hiding them from me entirely and assuming I never wanted to see them anyway.
This is a fair point. A possible counterpoint is that one can draw a line at malware. A fairly strong argument can be made that controlling popups is an exceptional security measure that is the only way, or the most effective way, to control the spread of objectively dangerous software. It is also a matter of UI - popups could appear faster than a human could control them, so it makes sense to make popups opt-in (which they are).
No similar argument can be made about disabling "www." It is purely an opinionated decision amounting to "you don't need www" - assuming it's not a bug, of course.
I didn't realize that the standards of the web specified anything about how an address bar should be displayed (or, for that matter, that it specified anything about an address bar even existing).
> This document describes the syntax and semantics for a compact string
representation for a resource available via the Internet. These
strings are called "Uniform Resource Locators" (URLs).
Safari doesn't show you the url at all until you click either; so the URL bar is just a domain indicator -- in that case, it seems less objectionable that it doesn't show the FQDN, but instead something different -- copying the url from a screenshot was bound for disappointment anyway.
My site, although one can argue it is a poorly configured (although it is intentionally configured this way), is a great example of why this is problematic.
I never set up a www cname, but now unless you're paying attention (or actually reading error messages) you might not notice that the reason it failed is because you're not at the domain but on the `www` subdomain. The URL bar doesn't convey this information until you click it and then it shows the full URL.
It's really minor but I also don't see a good reason to do this. All the sites hosted by the company I work for are hosted on `www.` with the intention that it "looks more professional".
