281753 - " toclip ('blah blah') " html command doesn't put anything into the clipboard buffer

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[john]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

When using a URL that requires text to be inserted automatically into the
clipboard buffer (ie. packetnews.com) after clicking on the appropriate link,
nothing is put into the buffer. The source HTML for the site uses the "toclip"
command that should put the appropriate text into the buffer, but it doesn't
with Firefox.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to www.packetnews.com
2. pick yer poison
3. click on the corresponding link.
4. go to notepad or some other text editor
5. hit ctrl-V, and watch it not appear.

Actual Results:  
Nothing, which is most unfortunate.

Expected Results:  
Put the text within the parameter for the "toclip" command into my clipboard buffer.

Comment 1

[:glob ✱]

toclip is a javascript function, in http://www.packetnews.com/toclip.js

javascript console reports:

Error: uncaught exception: A script from "http://www.packetnews.com" was denied
UniversalXPConnect privileges.

Comment 2

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

See http://forums.packetnews.com/index.php?showtopic=12900

Set the pref to say that rather than requiring signed code to do dangerous
things, you'll just trust that it probably came from the domain it seems to have
come from (that's what "codebase principals" means, see
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/components/signed-scripts.html ), then
when you click you'll get a dialog with a two second delay asking if you really
want to give the site permission to destroy your computer (true, but the same
level of danger as installing an extension from them without looking at the
code), and if you say yes then it will copy to your clipboard (and, for all you
or I know, copy from any file on your computer while it's at it). It works,
assuming you have complete and utter faith in the folks at packetnews.