Summary: We currently disallow programmatic copying and cutting from JS for Web content, which has relied on web sites to rely on Flash in order to copy content to the clipboard. We are planning to relax this restriction to allow this when execCommand is called in response to a user event. This restriction mimics what we do for other APIs, such as FullScreen.
Bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1012662 Link to standard: This is unfortunately not specified very precisely. There is a rough spec here: < https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/editing/raw-file/tip/editing.html#miscellaneous-commands> and the handling of clipboard events is specified here: < https://w3c.github.io/clipboard-apis/>. Sadly, the editing spec is not actively edited. We will strive for cross browser interoperability, of course. Platform coverage: All platforms. Target release: Firefox 40. Preference behind which this will be implemented: This won't be hidden behind a preference, as the code changes required are not big, and can be easily reverted. DevTools bug: N/A Do other browser engines implement this: IE 10 and Chrome 43 both implement this. Opera has adopted this from Blink as of version 29. Security & Privacy Concerns: We have discussed this rather extensively before: <http://bit.ly/1zynBg7>, and have decided that restricting these functions to only work in response to user events is enough to prevent abuse here. Note that we are not going to enable the "paste" command which would give applications access to the contents of the clipboard. Web designer / developer use-cases: This feature has been rather popular among web sites. Sites such as Github currently use Flash in order to allow people to copy text to the clipboard by clicking a button in their UI. Cheers, -- Ehsan _______________________________________________ dev-platform mailing list dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform