Function findLink

content_scripts/mode_normal.js:406–485

(linkStrings)

// favor 'next page' over 'the next big thing', and 'more' over 'nextcompany', even if 'next' occurs
// before 'more' in `linkStrings`.
function findLink(linkStrings) {
  const linksXPath = DomUtils.makeXPath([
    "a",
    "*[@onclick or @role='link' or contains(@class, 'button')]",
  ]);
  const links = DomUtils.evaluateXPath(linksXPath, XPathResult.ORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE);
  let candidateLinks = [];

  // At the end of this loop, candidateLinks will contain all visible links that match our patterns
  // links lower in the page are more likely to be the ones we want, so we loop through the snapshot
  // backwards.
  for (let i = links.snapshotLength - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
    const link = links.snapshotItem(i);

    // NOTE(philc): We used to enforce the bounding client rect on the link had nonzero width and
    // height. However, that's not a valid requirement. If an anchor tag has a single floated span
    // as a child, the anchor is still clickable even though it appears to have zero height. This is
    // the case with Google Search's "next" links as of 2025-06. See #4650.

    const computedStyle = globalThis.getComputedStyle(link, null);
    const isHidden = computedStyle.getPropertyValue("visibility") != "visible" ||
      computedStyle.getPropertyValue("display") == "none";
    if (isHidden) continue;

    let linkMatches = false;
    for (const linkString of linkStrings) {
      // SVG elements can have a null innerText.
      const matches = link.innerText?.toLowerCase().includes(linkString) ||
        link.value?.includes?.(linkString) ||
        link.getAttribute("title")?.toLowerCase().includes(linkString) ||
        link.getAttribute("aria-label")?.toLowerCase().includes(linkString);
      if (matches) {
        linkMatches = true;
        break;
      }
    }

    if (!linkMatches) continue;

    candidateLinks.push(link);
  }

  if (candidateLinks.length == 0) return;

  for (const link of candidateLinks) {
    link.wordCount = link.innerText.trim().split(/\s+/).length;
  }

  // We can use this trick to ensure that Array.sort is stable. We need this property to retain the
  // reverse in-page order of the links.

  candidateLinks.forEach((a, i) => a.originalIndex = i);

  // favor shorter links, and ignore those that are more than one word longer than the shortest link
  candidateLinks = candidateLinks
    .sort(function (a, b) {
      if (a.wordCount === b.wordCount) {
        return a.originalIndex - b.originalIndex;