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Okay, I've read all the responses so far at time of writing. Lots of technical solutions which would break the browser/site/web/whatever. What I haven't seen

Okay, I've read all the responses so far at time of writing. Lots of technical solutions which would break the browser/site/web/whatever. What I haven't seen is; Why not, on highlighting text to copy, a small window pops up in one of the corners of the browser, and whatever text would be copied to the clipboard, is instead bunged into this window? A sort of intermediate step as it were. Then if you're satisfied that the content is what you want, hit some 'really copy to clipboard' button. The window goes away, the text is copied to clipboard. A built-in text window. Because most people who use browsers aren;t going to go to the bother of copying and pasting into a text editor (Notepad, Kwrite, whatever) to vet the contents before pasting it wherever. So make the intermediate step mandatory.

atoav 7y ago
Or just display the copied text. If it isn’t the thing you want, don’t paste it or paste it into a text editor to edit it.
chatmasta 7y ago
I would love this. Similarly, I often use the URL bar as a sort of pivot point before pasting some bash command into my shell. It would be nice to have some kind of intermediate scratch pad that is a temporary-unless-touched kind of element, like what happens when you take a screenshot on macOS.
- DrAwdeOccarim 7y ago
  Same! I always wondered if I was the only one. It's a great way to sanitize text, especially when pasting into Powerpoint or Excel. Especially Excel because once you paste something, that formatting does not go away with Ctrl-Z (relevant comic https://i.imgur.com/pwXryVe.png https://i.imgur.com/pwXryVe.png)
- wasdfff 7y ago
  Only don't make them dissapear after 3 seconds...
roca 7y ago
For one thing, clipboard contents aren't necessarily plain text. But also, I suspect users would find this annoying and treat it as broken.
- scarygliders 7y ago
  I was thinking to include a sentence on that particular point, but thought it was obvious that non-text copy-to-clipboard (I have copied images straight from the browser to the clipboard quite often for example) would be handled differently, as image data should be distinguishable from text data. I don't think users would treat it as annoying - not if there was a terse explanation in the popup box, and there could always be an option to disable it (rather than make it mandatory) for those users too impatient to use it and would rather take the risk of pasting altered content into a CLI window ;)
  - roca 7y ago
    In my experience as a browser developer, you're overly optimistic about what users will put up with.
    - scarygliders 7y ago
      As a developer with decades of experience in designing GUI's, who always acts on feedback from end users of what I have produced, I think you're overly pessimistic about this suggested feature, and should at least try it, rather than dismissing it offhand without doing so. It's not like adding something like an intermediate stage like that would take an enormous amount of work - and the feedback would be more valuable than thinking "oh they won't like it".
      - roca 7y ago
        Maybe, just maybe, the people who work on Web browsers and have lots of experience shipping UI to that particular audience, are right to trust their intuitions more than yours about which experiments are worth carrying out.

atoav 7y ago

Or just display the copied text. If it isn’t the thing you want, don’t paste it or paste it into a text editor to edit it.

chatmasta 7y ago

I would love this. Similarly, I often use the URL bar as a sort of pivot point before pasting some bash command into my shell. It would be nice to have some kind of intermediate scratch pad that is a temporary-unless-touched kind of element, like what happens when you take a screenshot on macOS.

DrAwdeOccarim 7y ago
Same! I always wondered if I was the only one. It's a great way to sanitize text, especially when pasting into Powerpoint or Excel. Especially Excel because once you paste something, that formatting does not go away with Ctrl-Z (relevant comic https://i.imgur.com/pwXryVe.png https://i.imgur.com/pwXryVe.png)
wasdfff 7y ago
Only don't make them dissapear after 3 seconds...

roca 7y ago

For one thing, clipboard contents aren't necessarily plain text. But also, I suspect users would find this annoying and treat it as broken.

scarygliders 7y ago
I was thinking to include a sentence on that particular point, but thought it was obvious that non-text copy-to-clipboard (I have copied images straight from the browser to the clipboard quite often for example) would be handled differently, as image data should be distinguishable from text data. I don't think users would treat it as annoying - not if there was a terse explanation in the popup box, and there could always be an option to disable it (rather than make it mandatory) for those users too impatient to use it and would rather take the risk of pasting altered content into a CLI window ;)
- roca 7y ago
  In my experience as a browser developer, you're overly optimistic about what users will put up with.
  - scarygliders 7y ago
    As a developer with decades of experience in designing GUI's, who always acts on feedback from end users of what I have produced, I think you're overly pessimistic about this suggested feature, and should at least try it, rather than dismissing it offhand without doing so. It's not like adding something like an intermediate stage like that would take an enormous amount of work - and the feedback would be more valuable than thinking "oh they won't like it".
    - roca 7y ago
      Maybe, just maybe, the people who work on Web browsers and have lots of experience shipping UI to that particular audience, are right to trust their intuitions more than yours about which experiments are worth carrying out.