Enable Firefox clipboard commands #2601

mrmr1993 · 2017-08-15T16:32:28Z

This replaces #2524.

Copying from the clipboard works in both Chrome and Firefox.
Pasting from the clipboard only works in Chrome.
- I can't work out why it's not working in Firefox.
- the method here for pasting is almost exactly what we're using, so I'm pretty low on ideas.
~~I haven't converted the LinkHints.activateModeToCopyLinkUrl command to use the new handler, since I'm focusing on getting Firefox to paste.~~ Done

NB: this directs the copy/paste commands via the HUD. This feels (and is) weird, but it's the best we've got if the background page doesn't do this for us on FF.

/cc @smblott-github

gdh1995 · 2017-08-15T16:53:16Z

What if you add the "clipboardRead" permission into the permissions array in manifest.json?

Just an idea needing checks - I have no laptop at hand.

mrmr1993 · 2017-08-15T16:55:39Z

What if you add the "clipboardRead" permission into the permissions array in manifest.json?

We already have it, I'm afraid.

mrmr1993 · 2017-08-15T17:00:20Z

With 1548561 (implied necessary by https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Interact_with_the_clipboard), document.execCommand("Paste") returns true (rather than false before), but still nothing is pasted.

mrmr1993 · 2017-08-15T17:22:45Z

The 'working' example from the issue in their issue tracker doesn't work on FF54 or today's nightly. I'm giving up on reading the clipboard for now.

mrmr1993 · 2017-08-15T18:07:20Z

Pushed some more commits and reordered. This probably wants merging up to c50c172. (There's no point merging 6659501 and d5db97e since they don't actually fix pasting).

mrmr1993 · 2017-08-15T21:37:33Z

I've done all I want to with this now; IMO it's ready to go.

For posterity, several issues combined to stop pasting from working for me earlier:

Firefox won't paste in frames that are display: none
Firefox only pastes in <textarea contentEditable=true> elements
Sometimes (specifically, when the active element is the document <body>), the HUD frame gets selected as document.activeElement, and we don't receive any more key events until we blur it from the document
Firefox (almost?) always pastes nothing/whitespace when the clipboard contains rich text
- this includes text selected from webpages, which was pretty confusing while testing
- text from textboxes, the URL bar, etc. are fine

The last of these is still an issue for us, but there's no way of working around it.

gdh1995 · 2017-08-16T06:06:49Z

According to https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Interact_with_the_clipboard, an web-extension is able to do pasting on its background page using any content-editable elment. And I've succeed in pasting on background page, using <body contenteditable="true"> or <textarea contenteditable="true">.

But there're still some problems if using <textarea c~e~=true>:

copied multiline text are converted into single-line text and all of \n are removed
only pure text data (seems to be copied as text/plain) can be pasted
document.execCommand('Paste') wouldn't work (although still return true) any more, if only executing textarea.value = "", even when I created and used new <textarea>s - I don't know why but it was

~~Considering <body ce> supports multiline rich text and works robustly, I suggest using html > body > div[contenteditable=true] on the background page to do pasting.~~

Updated: div[ce=true] is not safe enough, because Chrome will paste HTML content including images...

mrmr1993 · 2017-08-20T14:36:47Z

Chrome are implementing an async clipboard API. It's been suggested on (one of the many) Firefox issue(s). We should keep an eye to see if this comes to anything, since it would make all the pain and weirdness go away.

smblott-github · 2017-09-15T09:15:24Z

@mrmr1993 What is the status of this? Is it good-to-go, from your perspective?

mrmr1993 · 2017-09-15T09:24:14Z

Yes. I'd like for there to be a better solution, but there doesn't seem to be for the time being. I'll keep an eye on the Firefox issues so that we can use something better when it comes up. On 15 Sep 2017 10:15 am, "Stephen Blott" <notifications@github.com<mailto:notifications@github.com>> wrote: @mrmr1993<https://github.com/mrmr1993> What is the status of this? Is it good-to-go, from your perspective?

ahstro · 2017-10-06T18:19:37Z

Any chance of merging this soon? 😇

smblott-github · 2017-10-07T06:29:45Z

Any chance of merging this soon?

Maybe. Maybe not. My understanding is that it's not as reliable as we'd like. And something which works only sometimes is a bad UX.

majutsushi · 2017-11-16T22:06:21Z

Would it be possible to at least get the yanking/copying to the clipboard part merged in the not-too-distant future? Judging by the multiple duplicates here and also my own experience that is the much more common operation, and the one that apparently works already. Especially if pasting from the clipboard might have to wait for the Firefox bug mentioned above, which would surely take a few months to actually be available in release versions. Thanks!

smblott-github · 2017-11-18T12:23:40Z

@mrmr1993... @majutsushi makes a good point, no?

If the yanking is reliable then we should merge that and (perhaps) disable all of the paste commands on FF.

mrmr1993 · 2017-11-18T12:31:02Z

Sounds good. I'll rebase now.

mrmr1993 · 2017-11-18T12:43:06Z

Rebased. (Old version here)

eyaleizenberg · 2017-11-21T12:24:18Z

Any updates on this?

ahstro · 2017-11-22T07:54:58Z

I had a dream this was merged. Now, I'm not saying I possess the gift of precognition, but I'm hoping for an early christmas miracle 🎄 ✨

philc · 2017-11-22T08:25:19Z

@smblott-github I think this has reached a good state; it LGTM. Let's merge if there are no further objections.

smblott-github · 2017-11-24T06:33:19Z

Yes, @philc. I'm permanently running behind at the moment.

@mrmr1993... Should we not be removing Clipboard and everything related to it from main.coffee too?

mrmr1993 · 2017-11-24T08:49:33Z

Can do, but I preferred not to. If there are any issues, I thought it would be better if we could just point the commands back to the old code on Chrome.

This adds support for pasting rich text from the clipboard

mrmr1993 · 2017-11-24T20:36:21Z

In latest Firefox, we can paste into contenteditable elements that aren't <textarea>. This gives us the ability to paste rich text, fixing the last of the issues I mentioned above. I've pushed a commit to take advantage of this.

This PR now gives Firefox the same full clipboard support as Chrome.

gdh1995 · 2017-11-25T05:53:44Z

@mrmr1993 As I mentioned before, div[ce=true] is not safe enough, because Chrome will paste HTML content including images (in my tests, <img>s). This means unexpected images might be loaded, if a user copy a line containing image icons from other web pages.

gdh1995 · 2017-11-25T06:04:23Z

I'm going to test the different behavior on pasting between Chrome and Firefox, and try using browser-specified APIs like onpaste to solve them safely.

Here're test results:

On Chrome, div[contenteditable=plaintext-only] is just enough. textarea is only OKay.
On Firefox, div[contenteditable=true] is able to contain pasted rich text like <img>s.
On both Chrome and Firefox, div[contenteditable=true] with a custom onpaste listener works well.
However, on Firefox a config item "dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled" can be set to false manually to disallow copy/paste events. If false, <div>.onpaste is still null and mutable, but no "paste" events can be received.

So I suggest that Vimium uses a try-catch to initial the element (if text[ce=plain-only] fails then div[ce=true] with onpaste), and the onpaste can be:

function (this: HTMLElement, event: ClipboardEvent): void {
  const d = event.clipboardData, text = d && typeof d.getData === "function" ? d.getData("text/plain") : "";
  event.preventDefault();
  event.stopImmediatePropagation();
  if (!text) { return; }
  (event.target as HTMLElement).ownerDocument.execCommand("insertText", false, text + "");
}

smblott-github

@mrmr1993 ... I'm going to merge this then make the two small changes mentioned. Let me know if I've got those wrong.

Thanks. We should probably push this to FF soon. What's your recommendation, @mrmr1993?

smblott-github · 2017-11-25T07:22:02Z

content_scripts/mode_normal.coffee

      url = url[0..25] + "...." if 28 < url.length
      HUD.showForDuration("Yanked #{url}", 2000)

+  openCopiedUrlInNewTab: (count) ->
+    HUD.pasteFromClipboard (url) ->
+      for i in [0...count] by 1


I might change this to use mkRepeatCommand in main.coffee (to keep the count logic in as few places as possible).

smblott-github · 2017-11-25T07:25:58Z

pages/hud.coffee

+    Clipboard.copy data
+    focusedElement?.focus()
+    window.parent.focus()
+    UIComponentServer.postMessage {name: "unfocusIfFocused", data}


unfocusIfFocused, above, does not take data, does it? I'll remove data here; let me know if that's incorrect, @mrmr1993.

Tweak of philc#2601.

@mrmr1993

These are no longer needed following philc#2601. @mrmr1993... If these are ever needed again, then we can just revert this commit (and make them background commands again).

smblott-github · 2017-11-25T10:00:45Z

@mrmr1993 I see that the new permission here causes Chrome to disable Vimium until the user accepts the new permission.

Might you be able to look into doing this dynamically: https://developer.chrome.com/apps/permissions?

gdh1995 · 2017-11-25T12:38:29Z

The clipboardWrite permission is safe to remove from manifest on Chrome.

The only effects I can see are:

Chrome will show an alert dialog when I add it.
The extension's detail will become "reading and changing your data...", while the old is only "reading"

But I think it's a good change to notice users that Vimium is allowed to modify the system clipboard.

mrmr1993 · 2017-11-28T13:29:54Z

Might you be able to look into doing this dynamically: https://developer.chrome.com/apps/permissions?

@smblott-github I had a look into it (branch here), but to no success. To quote Mozilla's docs:

The request can only be made inside the handler for a user action, such as

clicking the extension's browser action or page action

selecting its context menu item

activating a keyboard shortcut defined by the extension

clicking a button in a page bundled with the extension.

None of those things happens when a user tries to paste a URL using our commands. It looks like optional permissions are a no-go for us on FF.

(Sorry for the delay with this, I've had a few busy days.)

smblott-github · 2017-11-28T13:32:06Z

OK. Thank you.

mrmr1993 mentioned this pull request Aug 15, 2017

WIP: Enable Firefox clipboard commands #2524

Closed

mrmr1993 force-pushed the ff-copy-paste branch from 1548561 to d5db97e Compare August 15, 2017 17:55

mrmr1993 changed the title ~~WIP: Enable Firefox clipboard commands~~ Enable Firefox clipboard commands Aug 15, 2017

smblott-github added the smb-watching label Aug 16, 2017

smblott-github mentioned this pull request Sep 15, 2017

FF: yy does not copy current URL to clipboard #2652

Closed

knobhead mentioned this pull request Sep 18, 2017

Letter p opens google.com instead of clipboard's URL #2647

Open

mrmr1993 mentioned this pull request Sep 27, 2017

yank link (yf) command not yanking anything in Firefox #2677

Closed

smblott-github mentioned this pull request Oct 16, 2017

[Firefox] Copy URL does not work (yy) #2727

Closed

duguyipiao mentioned this pull request Oct 30, 2017

Clipboard binding opens Google page lusakasa/saka-key#64

Open

gliptak mentioned this pull request Oct 30, 2017

Paste URL ueokande/vim-vixen#3

Closed

mrmr1993 mentioned this pull request Nov 17, 2017

What is the difference between "y" and "yf" ? #2778

Closed

mrmr1993 added 4 commits November 18, 2017 12:35

FF: Add copy/paste functions to the HUD

5f36adb

Initialize the HUD for clipboard operations if it hasn't been already

976221f

FF: Add clipboardWrite permission, so we can copy to clipboard

5802b33

FF: Use HUD.copyToClipboard for copyCurrentUrl

ac79e75

mrmr1993 added 4 commits November 18, 2017 12:38

FF: Use HUD.copyToClipboard everywhere

05604d8

FF: Use HUD frame for openCopiedUrlIn{Current,New}Tab

448d609

FF: Add contentEditable to clipboard operation textboxes

9c1e90b

FF: Show HUD (transparently) when pasting, manage focus changes better

ec95cc2

mrmr1993 force-pushed the ff-copy-paste branch from 5a1f36c to ec95cc2 Compare November 18, 2017 12:42

klammbueddel mentioned this pull request Nov 20, 2017

Copy link text support #1947

Closed

FF: Use a contenteditable <div> for Clipboard.paste

c8a3954

This adds support for pasting rich text from the clipboard

smblott-github approved these changes Nov 25, 2017

View reviewed changes

smblott-github merged commit 58f45ac into philc:master Nov 25, 2017

smblott-github added a commit to smblott-github/vimium that referenced this pull request Nov 25, 2017

Use mkRepeatCommand in main.coffee.

0423471

Tweak of philc#2601.

smblott-github added a commit to smblott-github/vimium that referenced this pull request Nov 25, 2017

Remove unused parameter.

16e147b

Tweak of philc#2601.

smblott-github mentioned this pull request Dec 2, 2017

No clipboardWrite permission for Chrome Store version. #2852

Merged

mrmr1993 deleted the ff-copy-paste branch December 3, 2017 15:19

This was referenced Dec 13, 2017

Unable to copy to clipboard incognito mode #2867

Closed

Yank doesn't work in Vivaldi #2864

Closed

philc mentioned this pull request Feb 10, 2020

Why does Vimium need permissions to edit my clipboard in version 1.65.1? #3489

Closed

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Enable Firefox clipboard commands #2601

Enable Firefox clipboard commands #2601

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Enable Firefox clipboard commands #2601

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