4 ms·

Google introducing feature in Chrome 90 to create links to highlighted text

18 points by jameslk 6y ago

bobbiechen 6y ago
More detail on the spec - https://github.com/WICG/scroll-to-text-fragment/ https://github.com/WICG/scroll-to-text-fragment/
- szhu 6y ago
  Sidenote: > Fewer than 1% of clients use the "Find in Page" feature in Chrome on Android. This could potentially be fixed by making the "Find in Page" feature easier to access. Currently "Find in Page" on mobile is only accessible in the menu, below the fold. There's no gesture or other quick way to access it, making it significantly harder to activate than pressing Cmd-F or Ctrl-F. Are there any menu items below the fold that have over 1% usage? Another example of similar logic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26465261 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26465261
djohnston 6y ago
Didn't see in article, are these going to be amp links?
- duskwuff 6y ago
  No. Here's an example of what they look like: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26857748#:~:text=are%20these%20going%20to%20be%20amp%20links%3F https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26857748#:~:text=are%20...
- yawaramin 6y ago
  Ref. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26858042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26858042
exikyut 6y ago
I switched to Chrome Dev a few weeks ago (Debian Stable doesn't quite understand "browsers really do need to update faster than everything else" yet) and have been seeing this for a little while now. I really like it, because of what it enables. For appropriately recent browsers, Google occasionally incorporates text fragment snippets into search results. So I can jump straight from reading the result synopsis to seeing that synopsis in context - the new page loads, a bunch of text is yellow, my eyes get drawn to it immediately, but it's not overly intrusive and I can decide where I want to start reading in any case (for scenarios where Google's algorithm gets it wrong). I'd say it's worked in almost all cases; the one exception I've experienced was a scenario where once the page had finished jumping around on load and showing all its modal popups, the hilighted text was slightly offscreen. The way the feature works is that the hilight disappears the moment you click anywhere on the page or scroll. So of course I needed to both scroll the text into view, and click to hide the popup, at which point I had no idea where the hilight started. I guess this is the general antifeature of this feature; this has probably already been taken into account and accepted as a generally unfixable quirk.
8bitsrule 6y ago
Kind of a trivial feature. I expected to see: highlight some text and the search engine will show you a few potential (linkable) sources of info on the highlighted text.
rkagerer 6y ago
The ability for a Chrome URL to include a scroll-to-text fragment like this is old news: https://web.dev/text-fragments/#:~:text=supported%20in%20version https://web.dev/text-fragments/#:~:text=supported%20in%20ver... Having the built-in UI to easily highlight some text and generate such a link is new (but was previously available via an extension).
- Nemo_bis 6y ago
  Many send around such links without realising.
- mrkramer 6y ago
  I noticed this when I searched for definitions on Google and it led me to highlighted text on Wikipedia page.
arthurcolle 6y ago
I started using Waterfox and it reminds me of what Chrome was like early on - super snappy, fast page loads, elegant UI

18 points by jameslk 6y ago

More detail on the spec - https://github.com/WICG/scroll-to-text-fragment/ https://github.com/WICG/scroll-to-text-fragment/

szhu 6y ago
Sidenote: > Fewer than 1% of clients use the "Find in Page" feature in Chrome on Android. This could potentially be fixed by making the "Find in Page" feature easier to access. Currently "Find in Page" on mobile is only accessible in the menu, below the fold. There's no gesture or other quick way to access it, making it significantly harder to activate than pressing Cmd-F or Ctrl-F. Are there any menu items below the fold that have over 1% usage? Another example of similar logic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26465261 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26465261

djohnston 6y ago

Didn't see in article, are these going to be amp links?

duskwuff 6y ago
No. Here's an example of what they look like: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26857748#:~:text=are%20these%20going%20to%20be%20amp%20links%3F https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26857748#:~:text=are%20...
yawaramin 6y ago
Ref. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26858042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26858042

exikyut 6y ago

I switched to Chrome Dev a few weeks ago (Debian Stable doesn't quite understand "browsers really do need to update faster than everything else" yet) and have been seeing this for a little while now. I really like it, because of what it enables. For appropriately recent browsers, Google occasionally incorporates text fragment snippets into search results. So I can jump straight from reading the result synopsis to seeing that synopsis in context - the new page loads, a bunch of text is yellow, my eyes get drawn to it immediately, but it's not overly intrusive and I can decide where I want to start reading in any case (for scenarios where Google's algorithm gets it wrong). I'd say it's worked in almost all cases; the one exception I've experienced was a scenario where once the page had finished jumping around on load and showing all its modal popups, the hilighted text was slightly offscreen. The way the feature works is that the hilight disappears the moment you click anywhere on the page or scroll. So of course I needed to both scroll the text into view, and click to hide the popup, at which point I had no idea where the hilight started. I guess this is the general antifeature of this feature; this has probably already been taken into account and accepted as a generally unfixable quirk.

8bitsrule 6y ago

Kind of a trivial feature. I expected to see: highlight some text and the search engine will show you a few potential (linkable) sources of info on the highlighted text.

rkagerer 6y ago

The ability for a Chrome URL to include a scroll-to-text fragment like this is old news: https://web.dev/text-fragments/#:~:text=supported%20in%20version https://web.dev/text-fragments/#:~:text=supported%20in%20ver... Having the built-in UI to easily highlight some text and generate such a link is new (but was previously available via an extension).

Nemo_bis 6y ago
Many send around such links without realising.
mrkramer 6y ago
I noticed this when I searched for definitions on Google and it led me to highlighted text on Wikipedia page.

arthurcolle 6y ago

I started using Waterfox and it reminds me of what Chrome was like early on - super snappy, fast page loads, elegant UI