Have a drop down menu with protocol options (https/http) instead of letting users enter it each time

[ksy36]

To improve user experience we can, perhaps, consider adding a drop down menu before the input field with two options (https/http). That way they wouldn't need to enter it each time.

For users reporting through the extension the option will be preselected.

An example of such field can be found is shopify's polaris design system https://polaris.shopify.com/components/forms/text-field#navigation > Text field with connected fields

Thoughts? @karlcow @magsout @miketaylr

[karlcow]

I wonder if people will understand or even bother selecting the right protocol.

What could be possible to do first is to understand a bit better what is reported. aka extract all URIs from last year and see the proportion of http vs https

Let's see if I can extract these data:

• body:"**URL**: http://" 7,667 hits
• body:"**URL**: https://" 39,627 hits

84% of all URLs are httpS

let's change that for the year 2019 only.

• body:"**URL**: http://" AND created_at:[2019-01-01 TO 2019-12-31] 3,277 hits
• body:"**URL**: https://" AND created_at:[2019-01-01 TO 2019-12-31] 20,612 hits

86% httpS

so the safe bet is the default should be https.

And this number must even be higher because I tried some of these http and they redirect to https.

So I guess we can assume that everything is https and occasionally we would have to be careful at the testing phase that the URL is http or https. We could even have a webhook bot which

1. take the https url
2. test if it's alive
   • if yes, do nothing
   • if no, test http version if alive, send a comment to the issue with the correct url to test if not, send a comment to the issue saying that it might not be a valid issue.

[ksy36]

Thanks for checking the numbers @karlcow. Good idea with the webhook. We could also add a hint below the field, explaining that http can be selected. Also will probably need to account for users who copy and paste the url (subtract the protocol part from it).