10.5: Smart copy/paste from Safari to Mail

It seems that OS X 10.5 has some really smart copy/paste going on between Safari and Mail. Today I copied the track listing from an album page in Amazon which had a ton of code around it to download the tracks, play previews etc...

When I pasted it in to mail, I expected to just get the text, which I would need to strip stuff out to look readable. Much to my surprise, the whole table from the web page pasted in with full functionality in Mail, and even gave me a Dashboard-like X in a circle in the upper left corner of the paste area to make it easy for me to delete.

When my brother received my message, he was able to preview the tracks in the preview pane of the message. He also informed me that some "

" Flash code that was pasted into a message he received actually displayed the remote flash application -- I still need to look into that...

[robg adds: I tested this with youtube.com; I just drag-selected a region of the page that contained a video clip, pasted it into a new Mail message, and sent it to one of my other accounts. The end result? A perfectly formatted, embedded Flash email message -- even in 10.4. I could not make this work when sending from 10.4, though, even using Safari 3.]

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10.5: Smart copy/paste from Safari to Mail | 11 comments | Create New Account

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10.5: Smart copy/paste from Safari to Mail
Authored by: kainewynd2 on Tue, Nov 20 2007 at 2:46PM PST

This. Is. So. Cool.

10.5: Smart copy/paste from Safari to Mail
Authored by: DCJ001 on Tue, Nov 20 2007 at 3:00PM PST

I'm not sure what robg means when he says "I just drag-selected a region of the page." But one option that works is to press Command-I while looking at a page in Safari and even a Flash based YouTube video is embedded in the e-mail in Mail.

It sends the whole web page, but it can be edited before it's sent.

10.5: Smart copy/paste from Safari to Mail
Authored by: tommyw on Tue, Nov 20 2007 at 3:09PM PST

This works perfectly in OmniWeb too. So that must be something to do with Webkit. I get the little Dashboard type X and and the entire thing looks clean and plays fine.

10.5: Smart copy/paste from Safari to Mail
Authored by: britrock on Tue, Nov 20 2007 at 3:44PM PST

If you have configured mail.app to send in plain text and not rich text then you will only be able to copy the text of the page. If you convert the message to rich text (shift+command+T) then you will be able to paste the web page segment as described in the hint.

10.5: Smart copy/paste from Safari to Mail
Authored by: acaltabiano on Tue, Nov 20 2007 at 4:39PM PST

I'm sure it's related to the whole "Copy from safari to make your own dashboard widget."

Just pasting it into mail instead of your dashboard, no?

Still cool though.

---
timing has an awful lot to do with the outcome of a raindance
http://www.randombob.net

10.5: Smart copy/paste from Safari to Mail
Authored by: 47ronin on Tue, Nov 20 2007 at 4:43PM PST

This is nice for some things. Other times it's a real pain. My employer sometimes wants a full URL written out in an email and if i right-click a link from Safari and paste in Mail.app it will always try to paste the text of the link, with the link embedded in HTML. I have to resort to pasting in TextMate and copying THAT into Mail.

10.5: Smart copy/paste from Safari to Mail
Authored by: sabi on Tue, Nov 20 2007 at 5:31PM PST

There's actually a simpler way - use "Paste and Match Style" (cmd-opt-shift-V).

10.5: Smart copy/paste from Safari to Mail
Authored by: Spartacus on Wed, Nov 21 2007 at 12:50AM PST

For me, smart copy/paste from Safari to Mail would be that when I copy text in Safari (e.g. this comment) and paste it into a plain text message in Mail, that I don't get plain text with just one bit of formatting, 2.0 line spacing, that I cannot remove, not matter how hard I try.

It does the same thing when I reply to some HTML messages, it drives me crazy. And it's even worse, because if I make a trip through BBEdit or a clipboard unformatter, then I lose the quote bars in the process.

If anybody has a solution to this, I would be very grateful.

10.5: Smart copy/paste from Safari to Mail
Authored by: jporten on Wed, Nov 21 2007 at 9:39AM PST

This usually works: while viewing the original message, hit Command-Option-P to view the plain text alternative. Replying after that should strip the extra carriage returns and other unwanted formatting, while leaving the quote bars.

10.5: Smart copy/paste from Safari to Mail
Authored by: pascalpp on Wed, Nov 21 2007 at 9:56AM PST

One possible solution: JumpCut.

This is a multiple clipboard utility, which fortunately/unfortunately doesn't support anything other than plain text. So if you have rich text on the clipboard and you want just the text, you can invoke JumpCut (Cmd-Shift-V by default) and it will paste just the plain text. So for a link copied from Safari, you just get the URL.

10.5: Smart copy/paste from Safari to Mail
Authored by: T0b1 on Wed, Nov 21 2007 at 2:45PM PST

This reminds me of the "security" of flash in emails ...
http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/archives/2006/01/the_truth_about_1.html
Already tested all major mail clients and found Mac Mail to be vulnerable, btw. the only mua vulnerable to this kind of exploit.
Flash really is exploitable/scriptable BIG time - so if mail still plays flash out of the box this is probably to be considered a major security bug. I guess we will see this sooner or later on some security mailing list.

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