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saiafonua
New member
Status: New idea

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/

5 Comments
Status changed to: New idea
Jon
Community Manager
Community Manager

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

job
Strollin' around

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
Strollin' around

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
New member

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
New member

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.