4 ms·

> Which websites? Do you have specific examples? The link contains specific examples. But Microsoft's entire suite of Office 365 online applications is another

> Which websites? Do you have specific examples? The link contains specific examples. But Microsoft's entire suite of Office 365 online applications is another example. > critically dependent on manipulating my clipboard They're manipulating their own content before populating your clipboard request. There's a stark difference. If you turn off the clipboard interception (there's several extensions that do just that) you'll often get garbage out instead (e.g. raw HTML, gibberish, etc). But don't take my word for this, install one of those extensions and never opt out of any sites. You'll get roughly the experience you're asking for, including the broken ones.

yellowapple 7y ago
> If you turn off the clipboard interception (there's several extensions that do just that) you'll often get garbage out instead (e.g. raw HTML, gibberish, etc). One of the proposed fixes (only copy visible text) would fix this, not cause it to spontaneously happen. Not that it should be happening in the first place. If your site is abusing HTML to such a degree that the browser can't figure out on its own whether or not some text should be included when copying to the clipboard, and that you therefore feel the need to pull some insane switcheroo to get the "right" data into the clipboard, then that is the exact sort of site that ought to be burned to the ground and redesigned from scratch per my previous comment. That strongly indicates an extraordinarily-broken design. And yes, Google Docs and Office 365 would be included in that category of "burn it to the ground, salt the earth upon which it stood, and rethink its design in its entirety" if they were really that defectively-designed. Thankfully... > But don't take my word for this, install one of those extensions and never opt out of any sites. I already have (or more precisely: I set "dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled" to false in Firefox's about:config page), and just tried copying and pasting in Office 365. Word works without any issue whatsoever (except for a loss of formatting). Excel won't let me copy and paste cells, but if I double-click into a cell, copy the text, double-click into another cell, and paste, I get the same text (with default formatting). Similar deal for PowerPoint; it won't let me copy the text boxes themselves, but I can copy the text inside them and paste that text elsewhere. If I were to fix O365 in this scenario, I'd probably opt to use JS to detect the CTRL-C and CTRL-V keystrokes and maintain an application-specific internal clipboard specifically for these rich objects (cells in Excel, text boxes in PowerPoint, etc.); they're unlikely to be wanted outside of those applications, so no need to put anything in the real clipboard (besides what the browser thinks should go in it by default, if anything). The only thing that'd still be broken is any kind of text fallback (if one even exists).
- bpfrh 7y ago
  The only copy visible fix was afaik reject in the bug tracker because you could switch the visibility on and off for a short time (<1s). The don't allow changes to selection would mean if you mark something on a website and use a button to change it (change to a link for example) you can't do that anymore. The proposed fix would be either easily circumvented or/and would mean a high risk of breaking working sites. If you read the bug section the last comment explains why the proposed fixe are a bad idea.
  - yellowapple 7y ago
    > The proposed fix would be either easily circumvented or/and would mean a high risk of breaking working sites. It wouldn't be harder to circumvent if changing the text (including the visibility thereof) between the start and end of the selection caused an automatic deselection. It shouldn't break any sites, either, unless those sites are doing fishy things or are already poorly designed (which - again - would warrant the torches and salt).
    - bpfrh 7y ago
      Sorry for the late reply. That would mean the following would not work: selecting text-->making it bold(via button)-->making it underlined(via button)-->making it to a link(via button). There are valid use cases for selections and manipulations. I think the only way to work against such a thing would be to display the selected text in a tooltip like window, like another user described.
      - yellowapple 7y ago
        The web app could maintain its own start and end points for the selection (independent of what the browser deems "selected") and apply those operations to the text within that internally-defined range. None of those things affect visibility, though, nor do they change the actual content (just the styling/appearance), so the "deselect on visibility or content change" approach wouldn't impact that at all anyway.

yellowapple 7y ago

> If you turn off the clipboard interception (there's several extensions that do just that) you'll often get garbage out instead (e.g. raw HTML, gibberish, etc). One of the proposed fixes (only copy visible text) would fix this, not cause it to spontaneously happen. Not that it should be happening in the first place. If your site is abusing HTML to such a degree that the browser can't figure out on its own whether or not some text should be included when copying to the clipboard, and that you therefore feel the need to pull some insane switcheroo to get the "right" data into the clipboard, then that is the exact sort of site that ought to be burned to the ground and redesigned from scratch per my previous comment. That strongly indicates an extraordinarily-broken design. And yes, Google Docs and Office 365 would be included in that category of "burn it to the ground, salt the earth upon which it stood, and rethink its design in its entirety" if they were really that defectively-designed. Thankfully... > But don't take my word for this, install one of those extensions and never opt out of any sites. I already have (or more precisely: I set "dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled" to false in Firefox's about:config page), and just tried copying and pasting in Office 365. Word works without any issue whatsoever (except for a loss of formatting). Excel won't let me copy and paste cells, but if I double-click into a cell, copy the text, double-click into another cell, and paste, I get the same text (with default formatting). Similar deal for PowerPoint; it won't let me copy the text boxes themselves, but I can copy the text inside them and paste that text elsewhere. If I were to fix O365 in this scenario, I'd probably opt to use JS to detect the CTRL-C and CTRL-V keystrokes and maintain an application-specific internal clipboard specifically for these rich objects (cells in Excel, text boxes in PowerPoint, etc.); they're unlikely to be wanted outside of those applications, so no need to put anything in the real clipboard (besides what the browser thinks should go in it by default, if anything). The only thing that'd still be broken is any kind of text fallback (if one even exists).

bpfrh 7y ago
The only copy visible fix was afaik reject in the bug tracker because you could switch the visibility on and off for a short time (<1s). The don't allow changes to selection would mean if you mark something on a website and use a button to change it (change to a link for example) you can't do that anymore. The proposed fix would be either easily circumvented or/and would mean a high risk of breaking working sites. If you read the bug section the last comment explains why the proposed fixe are a bad idea.
- yellowapple 7y ago
  > The proposed fix would be either easily circumvented or/and would mean a high risk of breaking working sites. It wouldn't be harder to circumvent if changing the text (including the visibility thereof) between the start and end of the selection caused an automatic deselection. It shouldn't break any sites, either, unless those sites are doing fishy things or are already poorly designed (which - again - would warrant the torches and salt).
  - bpfrh 7y ago
    Sorry for the late reply. That would mean the following would not work: selecting text-->making it bold(via button)-->making it underlined(via button)-->making it to a link(via button). There are valid use cases for selections and manipulations. I think the only way to work against such a thing would be to display the selected text in a tooltip like window, like another user described.
    - yellowapple 7y ago
      The web app could maintain its own start and end points for the selection (independent of what the browser deems "selected") and apply those operations to the text within that internally-defined range. None of those things affect visibility, though, nor do they change the actual content (just the styling/appearance), so the "deselect on visibility or content change" approach wouldn't impact that at all anyway.