Understanding Inconsistent Text Fragment Interpretation Across Browsers: Chrome vs. Mobile Safari

Introduction

In today’s digital landscape, precise navigation and content highlighting are integral to enhancing user experience on websites. One method employed involves URL text fragments, which allow direct linking to specific content sections or highlights within a webpage. However, discrepancies in how different browsers interpret and generate these URL fragments can lead to inconsistent behavior, posing challenges for web developers and users alike. This article explores such inconsistencies observed between Google Chrome and Mobile Safari, particularly concerning space characters in text fragments, and discusses potential underlying causes and solutions.

Context and Use Case

The issue arises when linking to specific tracks on the Qobuz Download Store via text fragments embedded in URLs, as traditional anchor tags are unavailable. The goal is to generate URLs that, when accessed, directly highlight or scroll to particular text segments—such as song titles—using the browser’s native text fragment navigation capability.

Observed Behavior and Challenges

In desktop environments, notable differences occur in how browsers handle spaces within text fragments:

• Google Chrome (Desktop): When copying a link to highlight a text segment containing two successive spaces in the page source, Chrome generates a URL with only a single encoded space (“%20”). In practice, this URL successfully highlights the desired text in both Chrome and Safari desktop browsers.

• Safari (Desktop): Conversely, Safari’s generated URL includes encoding for both spaces (“%20%20”). This URL functions correctly in both desktop and mobile Safari environments.

• Safari (Mobile): However, the same Safari-generated URL does not work on Mobile Safari, failing to locate the specified text fragment. Conversely, Chrome’s URL with only one encoded space does not function correctly in desktop Chrome, failing to locate the text.

Implications

This inconsistency suggests that Safari interprets URL fragments based on the actual content of the page source, maintaining multiple spaces as they are, whereas Chrome appears to normalize or convert successive spaces into a single space within its text fragment computation. Additionally, mobile Safari seems to favor URLs that follow Safari’s own URL encoding, leading to further discrepancies.

Understanding the Root Cause

1. Different Interpretations of Whitespace: Browsers may differ in how they process whitespace within URL fragments—Chrome may normalize multiple spaces into a single space, while Safari retains the original spacing.

2. Source vs. Rendered Content: Safari seems to base text matching on the original page source, whereas Chrome may rely more on the visual layout, potentially