isabella232 / fragmentions

A proposal and polyfill to use # fragments with spaces in as links to phrases in a document.

Fragmentions

Fragmentions are anchors to phrases in a document.

<a href="#this%20specific%20text">Find this specific text</a>

• Google Chrome Extension
• Indie Web Camp Article
• WordPress Plugin
• Drupal Module

Usage

Fragmentions use # hash links to match words or phrases in a document, jumping to their corresponding element. Matches are case sensitive and whitespace insensitive. Corresponding elements may be spans, paragraphs, headings, buttons, inputs, or any other container element.

In the following example, clicking TL;DR would jump to the <strong> element containing Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

<article>
	<p>
		<a href="#the%20pursuit">TL;DR</a>
	</p>

	<p>
		When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people 
		to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, 
		and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal 
		station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a 
		decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should 
		declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
	</p>

	<p>
		We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created 
		equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable 
		Rights, that among these are <strong>Life, Liberty and the pursuit of 
		Happiness</strong>.
	</p>
</article>

For another example, a #the%20right%20ones%20in%20the%20right%20order fragmention would jump to the paragraph in the blockquote:

<p>If I want to point you to Tom Stoppard's quote from The Real Thing:

<blockquote><p>I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. 
They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, 
you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will 
speak for you when you’re dead.</p></blockquote> 

Additionally, location.fragmention returns a decoded fragmention, in the same manner that location.hash returns a decoded fragment.

While elements should not use IDs leading with a # single-hash, ## double-hash fragments with a matching ID (e.g. ##term and id="#term") will not be interpreted as fragmentions.

While fragmentions should start with a # single-hash, double-hash fragments with no matching ID (e.g. ##and+justice+for+all) will be interpreted as fragmentions for backwards compatibility.

JavaScript polyfill

The fragmention polyfill lets documents respond to fragmentions. When a fragmention is detected, the document is searched for its matching text. If a match is found, the window jumps to its corresponding element, adding a fragmention attribute for styling.

Additionally, the window.location object is given a fragmention property.

Browser support

The fragmention polyfill has been successfully tested in desktop Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Internet Explorer, as well as Firefox on Android and Safari on iOS. Legacy Internet Explorer browsers (6-8) are also supported, but marked as deprecated.

Notes: If existing fragmention support is detected on the window.location object, the polyfill is ignored. To work around an issue with Firefox decoding location.hash, location.href is used to interpret fragmentions instead. To work around various issues with old IE, light hacking ensues.

Chrome extension

The fragmention extension for Google Chrome duplicates the functionality of the JavaScript polyfill for all pages on the internet. Thanks to feature detection, the extension will not conflict with pages already using the JavaScript polyfill or future versions of Chrome that may support fragmentions.

Challenges

While most find the idea of fragmentions delightful, there are differing ideas on how they should work. We ask that contributors justify feature requests with concrete real world examples, as tests in the wild may reveal best practices. Otherwise, any of these challenges could be appended with, “So, uh, what do you think?”

Double-hashes in the wild

The current URL specification does not allow fragments to contain # hashes, so links with double-hashes like <a href="##foo"> will fail current validation. These specifications can be updated, and the invaliding weakness of ## may be conversely interpreted as a non-conflicting quality.

Because of this, we have switched to a single hash fragmention by default.

Browsers, on the other hand, do allow hashes, so invalid links in the wild like <a href="##foo"> might generate conflict. As a result, fragmentions will always defer to fragments with matching IDs.

Other spec-valid alternatives to the ## double-hash convention include #@ (hash + mention) and #* (hash + footnote).

Sensitivity

Fragmentions are case sensitive, making it easier to target specific text. However, if fragmentions were to be case insensitive, it would be easier to write them by hand. At first, there was no consensus on which practice was better, and over time case sensitivity has been accepted as the better choice.

Encoding

Fragmentions are decoded before search, which means + plus signs are interpreted as spaces. This makes for prettier, conforming URLs, but may also be confusing for users targeting phrases using the space character. Therefore, plus signs in content must be escaped as %2B.

Looks good to me

Thanks, now test it yourself, give us feedback, and have fun!

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The fragmention script is 2.8KB or 578B minified + gzipped.