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Comment by lucideer | Hacker News Reader

> It's an abuse of the purpose of URL fragments

So what they're saying is, they expect a clash of their abuse of URL fragments with others' abuse of URL fragmentsto be rare because...

The arrogance here is astounding: "It's OK for us to use this, because others shouldn't be using it"

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Aren't url fragment originally used for page position already? Like url.com/#title would scroll to the page the div with id "title"? In that case I don't feel like using url fragment for a word position is so much breaking it, it keeps the use of url fragment for info about page position, right?

>Aren't url fragment originally used for page position already? Like url.com/#title would scroll to the page the div with id "title"?

That was the pre-SPA, traditional role of anchors...

If you did any html between 1995-6 and 2005, you'd use it for that.

Then, with AJAX/SPAs, # was used for state (pre-history API) -- and I'd assume many webpages are still left at that use.

Of course, page anchors are still in wide use, and not just on old pages. https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/master/README.md#inst...

Very wide use.

I just finished a large healthcare web site that uses page anchors.

Page anchors are recommended by one of the (many) federal web accessibility guidelines. This is so that people with limited motion or poor motor control, or visual impairments don’t have to scroll to find what they’re looking for on a page.

It’s also how the “Skip to content” links work, which is Accessibility 101.

Sorry, I’m not at work or on a computer so I can’t link to a reference.

Here's a reference for "Skip to content" for those who have never bothered to make their web sites usable for people who aren't 20-somethings in perfect health (Google):

https://webaim.org/techniques/skipnav/

Yes but this is about namespacing/syntax and likelihood of clashes.

Normally, url fragments were intended to be used by page authors, making clashes impossible (page author controls both page and anchor syntax). Google are breaking this contract, but argue that the fact that they're using parameter-style syntax should not clash with author usage, because using parameter-style syntax is "an abuse" of the feature.

This is a good point, which I didn't get until your comment. I think they should surface this on that page, because it seems everyone is thinking this will be a big clash, but as you say, if someone shares a sentence, the likelihood is low.

To double check, does this means things like,

  https://www.spa/#!/path/to/view

Can become

  https://www.spa/#!/path/to/view&targetText=percent%20encoded

The only part I don't get about the likelihood and this extension is how it interacts with these kind of hash routes.

I haven't thought that much about the next part, but how do people feel about the following?

  web+text://https://www.spa/#!/route/to/view#targetText=percent%20encoded

or something. Rather than extending URLs vertically, extend horizontally into a different protocol the URI of which can encode the syntax elegantly.

Googles’s fragment solution should gracefully degrade to behaving like the normal link in other browsers (as long as there isn’t some fragment conflict) but creating a new pseudo protocol would have to be supported by each browser to even get to the site.

I think that's more risky in that most browsers and many intermediate proxies or other traffic inspectors are likely to have special casing around http: (at least) and https: and for most traffic to be over http(s): and a tiny sliver over web+text: seems fraught with more peril than a (fairly small and intention-aligned) abuse of #fragments. Even mail agents, markdown processors, and other text-display applications often have special casing to turn http(s) URLs into touchable/clickable links.

Page authors are unlikely to use web+text: if it means cutting off old browsers from access.

You could use two hashes like that and stick with http. I reckon browsers would cope, and you could strip the second one.

That is true of any URL, the user can decide to use it in ways you don't want. But that is also an intrinsic feature of the web. The best approach is to give users flexibility, but accept that websites may overide that behaviour.

Well, if we're talking about intention, they were originally a browser feature allowing to scroll to a specific <a target=..>. They were invented before JS if I'm not mistaken, so the assumption was that the browser was handling it.

Originally used with <a> anchors IIRC. So, yes it breaks the original use, instead of scrolling to the anchor with the correct "name" it could/would scroll to a different text search point.

Why not "##" as a new URL fragment, or add a "scrollto" to the link tag that the browser can use?

I guess those were discussed, is there an RFC?

It's another story point in the tale of how Google shaped the neo-modern web.

Google's influence is massive, anyone wanting to build a profitable website needs to bend to their standards of performance and structure.

Normally this was a general push in the right direction for everyone. With how they've been handling AMP however, part of me wonders if they're not trying to build a feature moat around the web itself. Although misguided use of their power by individual product-managers is probably the less sinister, more likely reason.

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