The android app already does this. Just FYI.

Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, I'd like to see this changed in the desktop app as well. We should be smart about the UX details around this though -- we want to make it very clear what URL users will be connecting to if they submit the form. One possible option would be to have two text boxes, with the top one being https://_____.zulipchat.com.

(I don't think the Android app's exact implementation on this is particularly good)

It make sense to autocomplete the url in the mobile app but in the desktop app, we should try to keep it as simple as possible. Don't need to add too much autocompletion and all. I think having two views (Self-hosted, zulipchat.com) would make sense here.

UX? One box, if the current text input matches the conditions, show <input placeholder=".zulipchat.com">-like thing, grey text at the right of the text input.

Yeah, I think that's better. We can assume https unless the URL starts with http:// (support for which is mainly for testing with the development environment).

I think some selfhosted folks could have something like http://zulip defined for their internal network. In those cases it would break for them. The solution for that would be to have two input boxes. Perrsonally I feel it maybe confusing/bad UX.

As I mentioned before:
hosted → https://hosted.zulipchat.com
http://hosted → http://hosted
https://hosted → https://hosted

With http, you would need to type http:// anyways, as we can default to https://. I don't see the problem here.
Adding the gray .zulipchat.com appended when no protocol is found, and the instance name is compatible with the naming rules makes it even more clear?

How is this exactly handled in the mobile app? Did we miss something?

Yeah, @jtagcat's comment reflects what I had in mind; I believe that's the algorithm the mobile app uses at a high level.

@gnprice FYI.

Are you still working on this? @aryanshridhar
or should I take it forward.

Hey @Signior-X , I have already added the necessary changes within #1043 . Would be great if you could address something which I accidentally left out .

Any chance I could take this a little further? I built off of #1043 and added a UX similar to the one's found in the mobile apps

Here is what it could look like:

let me know and I'll make a new PR for this issue

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It looks like this could still be up for discussion so I'll remove myself from this issue. There is likely a better solution for this, and if this continues to remain open I may take another shot at it :)

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is this issue still unresolved?