While working in a Google Doc on my Windows Vista computer, I noticed something new. It seems cut and paste doesn’t fully work. By ‘fully’ I mean that it works if you use keyboard shortcuts (ctrl-c, ctrl-v), or by choosing copy or paste from the Edit menu, but not if you right-click and choose copy or paste. This appears to be because Google creates it’s own right-click menu in the document, and some new security settings in Vista restrict how the browser can access the clipboard.
This happened using Firefox 2. I tried the same thing with Internet Explorer 7, and got a slightly different behavior:
IE asks if you want to allow the behavior. If you say Don’t Allow, the menu still allows you to choose cut/copy/paste, but nothing happens when you try to use it.
March 22nd, 2007 at 6:52 pm
This is not a new Vista thing… it does this in Firefox 2.0 under Windows XP. It’s a JavaScript security thing.
February 28th, 2008 at 12:20 am
[...] Apparently, Firefox (and in some cases IE7 in Windows Vista) wouldn’t allow Docs access to the clipboard, thus making the buttons useless and forcing Google to issue a popup explaining the error and instructing the user to use keyboard shortcuts. However, how many users who needed those toolbar buttons are using Firefox? Google needs to pay attention to all potential users, not just those familiar with keyboard shortcuts. [...]