Think this happened with the 4.x upgrade.
Example:

/item/1005008360936298.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.1.7444e9lve9lv7O&algo_pvid=335973de-8e73-4efb-ab8d-2385653580e6&algo_exp_id=335973de-8e73-4efb-ab8d-2385653580e6-0&pdp_ext_f={"order"%3A"65"%2C"eval"%3A"1"}&pdp_npi=4%40dis!NOK!63.74!25.49!!!40.58!16.23!%402103867617397917508275698e9b72!12000044718988434!sea!NO!163879643!X&curPageLogUid=NjkPSNbJqabv&utparam-url=scene%3Asearch|query_from%3A

Edited February 17Feb 17 by Canis

Sorry, I'm not sure what it is you are referring to here. Please could you further clarify?

I think why is the link text beween the a-tags not abbreviated and text as a whole is used instead of abbreviating it with ... after x number of characters. But I have no idea if the software did it before.

Edited February 17Feb 17 by Hatsu

29 minutes ago, Marc said:

Sorry, I'm not sure what it is you are referring to here. Please could you further clarify?

He’s probably talking about this:

@Canis

This was a feature on IP.Board 3. It was dropped on IPS4. My image is from a plugin to IPS4.

Edited February 17Feb 17 by Adriano Faria

2 hours ago, Marc said:

Sorry, I'm not sure what it is you are referring to here. Please could you further clarify?

Not sure what to clarify. This was a serious downgrade, but it might be reasons behind that I do not know, Hence this question.
(Maybe truncate is more correct than abbreviate.)

3 minutes ago, Canis said:

Not sure what to clarify. This was a serious downgrade, but it might be reasons behind that I do not know, Hence this question.
(Maybe truncate is more correct than abbreviate.)

As mentioned above, this hasnt been a feature in version 4 I dont believe, and was removed in version 3, and so was actually removed over a decade ago

Yes, but my question was why it was removed?

Major version changes mean starting over a lot of things. If the effort to refactor a feature is too much or there is not enough value, it might not get included. Version 4 is over 10 years old. It can’t be that important given there is no one asking for it until literally more than a decade later.

Using IPB for 21 years we did ask 10 years ago and have since been waiting for it to be implemented again. It's an obvious omission.

1 hour ago, Canis said:

Yes, but my question was why it was removed?

Actually, since version 4 was a complete rewrite from the ground upward at the time, it was simply not part of version 4, rather than something that was removed. Please feel free to add a suggestion in the feedback area