#952411 chromium: coming ScrollToTextFragment in Chrome 80

Package:
chromium
Source:
chromium
Description:
web browser
Submitter:
Matt Taggart
Date:
2025-04-23 15:30:01 UTC
Severity:
normal
#952411#5
Date:
2020-02-23 22:32:04 UTC
From:
To:
I just saw this article about a new feature coming in Chrome 80,

https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2020/02/23/google-chrome-80-upgrade-deep-linking-update-chrome-browser/

That seems like something we want to not include in debian chromium.
I ran a grep on the current unstable source and this is what it found.

$ rgrep ScrollToTextFr
third_party/blink/renderer/core/page/scrolling/text_fragment_anchor.cc:
// https://wicg.github.io/ScrollToTextFragment/#should-allow-text-fragment
third_party/blink/renderer/core/frame/fragment_directive.idl://
https://github.com/WICG/ScrollToTextFragment

Based on those I then searched for "TextFragment" which found a lot more
(but I don't know which are relevent).

Maybe someone who understands the chromium source can investigate further.

Thanks,

#952411#10
Date:
2023-07-26 18:27:00 UTC
From:
To:
I just rediscovered #952411 which I filed on 23 Feb 2020. Here's an update.

This "ScrollToTextFragment" feature seems to have been added.
Currently on 115.0.5790.98-1~deb11u1 if I go to the following example

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cat&oldid=916388819#:~:text=Claws-,Like%20almost,the%20Felidae%2C,-cats

it does scroll to the targeted text and highlight it. That example is
taken from the draft of the spec at

https://github.com/WICG/scroll-to-text-fragment

Here is a simplified example:

https://www.debian.org/#:~:text=Additional-,information,Debian,-Community

It's also easy to generate similar by selecting some text on a page,
right-click and "Copy link to highlight".

Notes:
* these URLs seem to do nothing on current firefox-esr
* it looks like Brave disabled it by default
* maybe going into HTML? https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/8282

Here is the upstream spec issue discussing the privacy implications of this

https://github.com/WICG/scroll-to-text-fragment/issues/76

and discussion about creating ways to disable

https://github.com/WICG/scroll-to-text-fragment/issues/122

Since there is currently no easy way to disable, this lead to someone
making an extension to disable. "disable-google-search-text-highlights"

I have not attempted to determine if the privacy concerns have been
addressed or the level of potential threat, someone more familiar with
this area should do that.

Thanks,

#952411#13
Date:
2025-04-23 15:27:22 UTC
From:
To:
On Wed, 26 Jul 2023 11:27:00 -0700 Matt Taggart <matt@lackof.org> wrote:
[...]


FYI, this can be disabled with by running chromium with the following
argument: