use the HTML “rel” attribute for ]] and [[

[Maelan]

Issue type:

• Feature request

Description:

the current implementation of ]] / [[ (go to next / previous page — extremely useful) uses an ad hoc heuristics: a regex (option 'nextpattern' / 'prevpattern') to find a link to a potential next / previous page. this works on some pages but does not catch everything, so one can only hope it works on its favorite website (in my experience this is seldom the case of non‐English‐speaking website). you can try and patch the regexes, but well…

good news: there exists a HTML attribute for that very purpose. this is called rel and can be given to <link> and <a> tags (doc for <link> and for <a>). so, provided a page uses it, we can find the relevant URL much more easily, and without risk of error.

Expected behavior:

]] / [[ should:

1. first look for a <link href="URL" rel="next/prev"/> tag in the HTML head;
2. if not, look for a <a href="URL" rel="next/prev"> tag in the body;
3. if not, look for a <a href="URL"> tag in the body with the link text matching 'nextpattern' / 'prevpattern' (the current behaviour).

Final note:

did i say how useful this feature is? :-)

[timss]

Nice idea :)

If you want to see it come to fruition though, you're probably best to try to give it a shot yourself and contribute a PR which I'd be happy to test and merge.

[Maelan]

indeed it sounds like an easy patch and i would happily try and do it myself. ;-) unfortunately, i can’t contribute right now as i don’t have a Linux 64 bits — which is necessary to run the developer’s version of Firefox — a very absurd reason, isn’t it… however i will soon get access to one.

(i’m also concerned by the incoming WebExtensions. i don’t know much about that bad joke, i guess it wouldn’t prevent such a functionality since it is not UI‐related, but maybe that the precise API would change?)