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Smarter Than 'Ctrl+F': Linking Directly to Web Page Content

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Re: Smarter Than 'Ctrl+F': Linking Directly to Web Page Content

#101

Post by poincaredisk »

JimDabell wrote: post #49
master-lincoln wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you make your point without accusing people of dishonesty? I was just returning the favor to amiga386 to make them see this is not a normal form of communication. They lead with > Be honest and admit that full, reliable support for this feature among all the main browsers is not going to be there until at least next year. When I think they meant to say support for most users isn't there until next year. Because…

> When I think they meant to say support for most users isn't there until next year. They did say that though: > full, reliable support “Reliable” in the context of browser support means widely supported in the browser versions people actually use – i.e. web developers can rely upon it being there. Something that is only available in a browser version released last week is not “reliable” in the sense of browser suppo…

But Firefox supports it. Firefox developers can't do anything else to improve the support. There's no reason to suspect this feature is not implemented in a reliable way.

The onus is now on users that use Firefox. You're right that many Firefox users don't run the newest version, and you can't in general rely on a Firefox user having a browser new enough to support this feature.

Maybe this is a pedantic distinction, but it feels weird to say "Firefox doesn't support X" to mean "Old version of firefox, that some people use, doesn't support X"

Re: Smarter Than 'Ctrl+F': Linking Directly to Web Page Content

#102

Post by antiframe »

DrammBA wrote: post #91
Sophira wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if you choose to have separate URL and search bars. In that case, Ctrl-L goes to the URL bar, and Ctrl-K goes to the search bar.

Honest question, what's the use case for separate url and search bars?

It prevents you from leaking data in cases where you like live search suggestions (like completions from your search engine based on partial text entered) but didn't want your search engine recording all the URLs you visit outside of search.

Re: Smarter Than 'Ctrl+F': Linking Directly to Web Page Content

#103

Post by gertrunde »

In all honesty, I've hated this feature with a passion ever since it appeared.

If it was simply a matter of being used in the way outlined in the article, when someone creates a a link that references a particular piece of text, then fine, someone has deliberated intended the link to behave like that.

And then we have the lovely folk at Google search... who think it's fun to drag my attention off to a random part of a page that isn't where I want to be, forcing me to right-click, remove annotation and scroll back up to the top of the page.

That doesn't seem like a massive hardship, but it gets quite frustrating when multiplied over the many searches done in a day/week/month.

Re: Smarter Than 'Ctrl+F': Linking Directly to Web Page Content

#104

Post by n_plus_1_acc »

wkjagt wrote: post #67
RedShift1 wrote: post #2

Sidenote: please don't hijack CTRL+F on webpages, thanks. Sincerely, the world.

Interesting that this is the top comment at the time I'm reading this, while the article isn't at all about hijacking CTRL+F.

That's why it's prefaced with "sidenote"

Re: Smarter Than 'Ctrl+F': Linking Directly to Web Page Content

#105

Post by JimDabell »

poincaredisk wrote: post #101
JimDabell wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I think they meant to say support for most users isn't there until next year. They did say that though: > full, reliable support “Reliable” in the context of browser support means widely supported in the browser versions people actually use – i.e. web developers can rely upon it being there. Something that is only available in a browser version released last week is not “reliable” in the sense of browser suppo…

But Firefox supports it. Firefox developers can't do anything else to improve the support. There's no reason to suspect this feature is not implemented in a reliable way. The onus is now on users that use Firefox. You're right that many Firefox users don't run the newest version, and you can't in general rely on a Firefox user having a browser new enough to support this feature. Maybe this is a pedantic distinction,…

> There's no reason to suspect this feature is not implemented in a reliable way.

As I said in my earlier reply, that is not what “reliable” is referring to in the context of browser support. “Reliable” means “We can rely upon our users having it available in their browser”.

This feature does not have reliable support and will not have reliable support until common browser support matrices – of which Firefox ESR is a part – includes support.

OP was correct to say that browser support is unreliable and that Firefox ESR is the thing causing this and will continue to be until next year.

Are you a web developer? “Reliable browser support” is a very well-understood term of art.

Re: Smarter Than 'Ctrl+F': Linking Directly to Web Page Content

#106

Post by n_plus_1_acc »

egeozcan wrote: post #61
arusahni wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hijacking CTRL+K sucks, too! It's the shortcut used to focus the browser search input in Firefox, but the industry has seemingly decided it's a great way to launch a command palette.

I recently implemented this, and the users loved it, though I was disappointed to hear it may have frustrated a usually silent group. I'm open to feedback! What would be a better approach? Please don’t just suggest “no custom shortcuts for any web app”—people spend 60-70% of their workday using the UI components my team maintains. While random sites hijacking shortcuts is definitely frustrating, in our case, the pros…

Maybe you could find shortcuts that aren't used by major browsers. They should be documented somewhere.

Re: Smarter Than 'Ctrl+F': Linking Directly to Web Page Content

#107

Post by IshKebab »

hk1337 wrote: post #52

It’s really cool but it seems rather convoluted for the typical user. We should perhaps start making good use of the ID attribute and linking to that first before we start trying to use ~:text=

It's literally three clicks... Select text, right click, create link to selection.

I agree you should prefer IDs but they aren't always available, and often using them is very convoluted for users (how many are going to know how to use the element inspector, or even what an ID is?).

Re: Smarter Than 'Ctrl+F': Linking Directly to Web Page Content

#108

Post by n_plus_1_acc »

Sophira wrote: post #78
pythonlover2153 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CTRL+L works for that too on Chromium / Firefox.

Not if you choose to have separate URL and search bars. In that case, Ctrl-L goes to the URL bar, and Ctrl-K goes to the search bar.

And F6 is one of them, but I can't remember which one.

Re: Smarter Than 'Ctrl+F': Linking Directly to Web Page Content

#110

Post by nashashmi »

rzzzt wrote: post #9
polotics wrote: post #3

Very nice! Hopefully Firefox developers have the bandwidth to implement this as well, and not let Google Chrome have this feature as an "embrace and extend" differentiator. As for MS-Edge, well I guess it must be funny for Microsoft to see they're getting a taste of their own sweet old medicine...

Edge does have a "Copy link to highlight" option in its context menu.

And on mobile, it is called “create link”
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