Support Text Fragments

[saiafonua]

I would like Firefox to support text fragments, like Chrome and Safari does. For example, click on this link: https://blog.chromium.org/2019/12/chrome-80-content-indexing-es-modules.html#:~:text=ECMAScript%20Mo.... in chrome or safari and you will see highlighted text. Firefox doesn't highlight or automatically scroll to the targeted text.

Source: https://web.dev/text-fragments/

[Jon]

Thanks for submitting an idea to the Mozilla Connect community! Your idea is now open to votes (aka kudos) and comments.

[job]

Sttf is still in the drafts and is not a finalized standard, so already this should be shot down.. Besides this should be something an extension should do (and they do exist in the AMO) for those who need it, not added as yet another mostly useless bloat in the browser core IMHO.

[cachi]

There is a similar idea with additional UI details over here.

Also there's already a bug for this where you can track implementation state.

Even an MDN article on Text fragments exists already, only it's not applicable to Firefox.

Mozilla's position on the URL Fragment Text Directives spec is positive, so let's hope it lands quickly as it's really practical.

[JaveWeb]

I would understand the draft argument for some complex feature with unclear behavior. This is not the case though.

The intention is clear as crystal: Jump to the first CTRL+F of the text, optionally, highlight it. Since it can be based on an already existing feature, I would hardly call this a "code bloating".

Web 2.0 added a lot of stuff that were do-able, just unnecessarily complex to do and not-performant, this is the same principle.

I would rather see Firefox literally opening the "Find in This page…" and submitting the text from URL than not to implement it at all 😊 All webkits and blinks already have it... 

[BumbleBeeElegy]

Adding my 👍 here. Firefox is currently the only major browser that doesn't provide any support at all for text fragments (as I discovered today during some testing), so I'm hoping support is added soon. Text fragments are supported in Chrome, Chrome Android, Edge, Opera, Opera Android, Safari, Safari iOS, Samsung Internet, and WebView Android.

---

My original source I was trying to determine why a text fragment wasn't working in Firefox:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Text_fragments#browser_compatibility.

I was testing in Firefox first and initially thought it was a compatibility issue elsewhere. I was then able to test and confirm that text fragments work in all those browsers* as well. Support in Safari (macOS) is more limited but text fragments do work there.

* Exception: I wasn't able to text in Safari iOS or Samsung Internet, since I don't have access to an iOS or Samsung device at the moment, but I expect they'll work they're since they're supported.

[ncdave4life]

It's now been more than three years, and Firefox still lacks support for text fragment links. That's the reason I rarely use Firefox, and it's why I don't recommend Firefox to others.

The Web is full of text fragment links, not the least of which are those returned automatically by google searches. None of those links work in Firefox. That's a HUGE disadvantage for Firefox users.

On my own site I've even added a few ":~:text=text fragment" anchors, so that a few specific text fragment links into my own webpages don't break so badly in Firefox: they still don't get highlighted, of course, but at least they go do the right place.

Google/Alphabet is evil, so I'd really rather avoid them whenever possible. So I WANT to like Firefox. But, because of this one huge problem, the browsing experience with Firefox is so severely inferior to Chromium-based browsers, that Firefox just isn't competitive.

[Jon]

Hey all,

Happy to share that this feature is currently being worked on — feel free to track the implementation progress on Bugzilla and stay tuned for updates here on Connect 😀

[Jon]

Quick update from the team working on this feature - it is currently going through QA to verify the quality, and we're aiming for release in Firefox 131.

[Yump]

I recently discovered this in Nightly 132, and it's awesome. However, it'd be even awesome-er if there was a "copy link to selection" item in the right-click context menu when text was selected.

Fortunately, it looks like the team is aware of this, and it is being tracked as bug 1779688.

[belleflower]

I understand the desire to include this feature for users. While it has utility when linking to a specific string of text within a webpage, I don't want every search result to direct me to a link with a text fragment URL like the example text fragment link shown above. This issue is pervasive regardless of which search engine I use. I am going to a link from search to find general information. If I want something specific, I can utilize the "find in page" feature. The text fragment URL would be perfect in the right-click menu with a "copy link to selection" option, as mentioned by Yump. Would you please add the option in Settings>Search to disable text fragments when clicking search result URLs?

It is worth nothing that if I perform a basic search such as "adventure," I don't get text fragments in the URL when clicking on results. However, if I had searched "adventure tom sawyer," I get the following link, as an example: https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/tomsawyer/summary/#:~:text=A%20short%20summary%20of%20Mark%20Twain's%.... I don't enjoy having to pare down URLs to the useful URL every time.

[ZQk]

>I don't want every search result to direct me to a link with a text fragment URL like the example text fragment link shown above. 

>I don't enjoy having to pare down URLs to the useful URL every time.

Why isn't it useful for you? Could you elaborate? Is it simply that you think the link is incorrect and points to the wrong part of the web page?

[FluffyWhisker]

Now that this was implemented, may we have an option to disable it? I have 0 interest in this feature, and immediately disabled it in the about:config. However, this is not possible on the mobile version of Firefox without using the beta version, which is frustrating. It's fine to implement text fragments; but an option to disable it would really place Firefox a step above the others.

[whatever2024]

Seconding what FluffyWhisker said. 99% of the time when I'm bookmarking, sharing, or placing a link in a document, the text appended to the URL is just annoying clutter.

[ncdave4life]

I'm very glad that text fragment links now work in Firefox! That removes a huge barrier to recommending Firefox.

However, I've discovered a small problem with Firefox's text fragment support: the target webpage cannot discover the text fragment.

In both Chrome and Firefox, the #:~:text=textsnippet  is missing from 

window.location.hash and window.location.href, but in Chrome it is available in 

performance.getEntriesByType("navigation")[0].name and that doesn't work in Firefox. AFAIK, there's no way to discover the text fragment link from within the webpage's javascript code, on Firefox.

Do I need to open a bug report?

[look]

I can use this function of sharing text fragment links in Firefox for iOS already with the text marking functions of iOS (since 18.2). It's such a useful feature, please put this feature in Firefox, too!