Forum Discussion
MicrosoftAnnouncing a new way to paste URLs, Link format!
MicrosoftMissyQ I appreciate what this feature is trying to do, but having it run as the default for <Ctrl>-C just drove me insane trying to figure out what happened until I found this page. With 30 years of muscle memory for just plain copying-and-pasting, you're asking me (and a lot of other people) to remember that <Ctrl>-C works differently in Edge than in any other program in Windows (what gets copied is not what I just selected), and then you're also asking me to remember that <Ctrl>-V doesn't do what I'm expecting it to anymore in all of the other programs, and that I need to remember to use <Ctrl>-<Shift>-V.
On Mac and Windows, <Ctrl/Cmd>-Z|X|C|V|Y are well-known keystrokes that have meant the same thing for a really long time... I'd strongly suggest that you think long and hard before messing with that fundamental, baked-into-the-OS key combination. I've turned the new feature off on all of my computers for exactly this reason, but I'd use it if it were, for instance, <Ctrl>-<Shift>-C to get Link Format, and then I'd know that <Ctrl>-V would just do the thing that I intend, because I just copied it in the format I wanted.
Scott Arbeit Sadly, it never did what you describe of copying what you select. Try a URL with non-ASCII characters like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Białystok. What used to get put on the clipboard was the text https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bia%C5%82ystok. Now you get this plus the following HTML as well as two new link formats.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bia%C5%82ystok">Białystok - Wikipedia</a>
What bothers me more is that Win+V is deceptive. I see the following yet this isn't what is pasted. There is no combination of Win+V and Paste Special. Even Ctrl+Shift+V is Edge specific.
- JaredB81
Thank you, rshupak.
I'm not able to reproduce the behavior you describe on that URL (and I have tested other non-ASCII cases as well).
A few questions for you to better understand what you are experiencing:
- Which channel and build of Edge are you using? You can find both the build and channel in edge://version
- Where exactly (in which website, web app or Windows app) are you attempting to paste the URL?
- What is your default format setting in edge://settings/shareCopyPaste ?
- How are you attempting to perform the paste (ctrl+v, ctrl+shift+v or the right-click context menu)?
For example, when I use the "plain text" paste format here, I get: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bia%C5%82ystok. as you described I should.
Thanks very much,
Jared
JaredB81 I tried this on Canary 87.0.641.0. I just checked dev 87.0.637.0 and it is the same.
Copy the URL from the address bar. If you find the IRI copied to the clipboard instead of the URL encoded form, I would be very surprised. Please confirm that you see the encoded URL that Anaheim has always copied.
I am a bit surprised that the UTF-8 encoded CF_HTML content writes the encoded URL to the A element href property. This should be able to handle an IRI but maybe there are plenty of broken apps. All the ones I use support IRIs so it bothers me to see the unreadable encoded URLs as nothing I have seen except the browser address bar reverses the process to display the IRI.
For the Text, Unicode Text, and OEM Text content that Edge places on the clipboard, I have tools to fetch the clipboard contents directly but these three formats can be seen by pasting into Notepad.
The CF_HTML is also retrieved by a tool. Here is what I see. Note that this site will want to corrupt the HTML so I will paste a screenshot.
On a related note, I cannot paste an image into this site from Edge canary. This used to work. I don't know if it is a bug introduced into the site, Edge, or both.
I don't have a tool to retrieve the two new link specific formats. The Office apps don't support those, at least not yet, so default Paste and Paste Special by choice use the CF_HTML which behaves exactly as expected and matches the HTML from the clipboard.
Pasting into this site with Ctrl+Shift+V does match the Unicode Text content. Ctrl+V behavior matches the CF_HTML content but could be one of the new link formats. I didn't look into it.
Not a single one if these variants will paste the IRI. I might even be OK with a link format that uses the encoded URL with the link target and the IRI with the link text. I can't say I never want the page title but I personally rarely want the text that the target itself uses as its title.
I mentioned the issue with IRIs only point out that Anaheim previously would not copy what the user sees. My major gripe is that I need any app that understands CF_HTML of presumably the new link clipboard types to support Paste Special if they will prioritize HTML over plain text, which any such app would presumably do. And when they do, such as the Office apps, is requires much more effort than just Ctrl+V which I believe is the point of the post to which I replied. My more serious gripe is that I use Win+V a great deal, more often than not with URLs, and there is no mechanism for Win+V and Paste Special. Maybe discuss this with the Windows team that just combined Win+V and Win+. to fill this hole.
I also want to mention, though you likely knew this, is that Copy Link in the context menu of right clicking on an HTML anchor element doesn't work as I would expect which would be to copy the link using the inner text as the title. Obviously this is complicated by the ability to have more than just text but it seems weird.
I also suggest updating Improved copy and paste of URLs in Microsoft Edge to not suggest that Ctrl+Shift+V is a standard to be used in arbitrary apps.
And I purposely used Ctrl+V to paste the link to the support page above to give an example where I think it is less clear than if the URL itself were used.
Rich
- JaredB81
Scott Arbeit thank you very much for the feedback, Scott.
Did you try to find a setting to change the default paste behavior prior to finding this article? If so, were you able to find it or did you have some difficulty finding it?
Thanks again,
Jared
- Scott Arbeit
JaredB81 I didn't search for a setting before reading this page. After the second time it happened, and I had to paste-and-copy-again from Notepad to get the bare URL, I remembered that I had just gotten the Edge Dev update and figured I'd check the release announcements. Not sure most people would understand what happened...
- JaredB81
Scott Arbeit thanks for the added info! I appreciate it.
Scott Arbeit thank you for stating the issue so clearly. They clearly missed checking common sense before they decided to roll this out.
