Forum Discussion

MissyQ's avatar
MissyQ
Former Employee
Aug 19, 2020

Announcing a new way to paste URLs, Link format!

Recently, we wanted to dig into how users feel about copying and pasting a URL from their browser. We looked to understand what they do when they copy and paste URLs, as well as the pain points they ...
Trevor Seward's avatar
Trevor Seward
MVP
Jan 12, 2021

@JaredB81 I'll provide some blunt feedback about this... This feature is anti-user and breaks ~40 years of Copy/Paste functionality spanning back Xerox PARC.

 

Copy should not be "smart", per se. I've been fighting this new feature continually when attempting to copy a link (right click link -> Copy Link) to paste into plain text fields on another website which is using TextBoxFor controls. Instead of pasting the URI of the link, it pastes previously copied text from the clipboard, i.e. a value copied from TextEdit. Example sites of where this is occurring:

https://support.microsoft.com/help/4583559; copying links to the KB articles listed in this article.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=102602; copying the download link ("click here to download manually").


I'm on macOS (Intel) Canary, current build as of today though this has been occurring for awhile. The behavior is unfortunately inconsistent. Sometimes it works and pastes the underlying copied link and sometimes it pastes plain text from a previously copied textual value (i.e. text in TextEdit).

 

I have "Plain Text" set as the default copy/paste value in Edge Settings.

 

My request would be have a method to disable this new feature via the UI and perhaps disabled by default since it does break from established user experience.

  • HotCakeX's avatar
    HotCakeX
    MVP
    Jan 13, 2021

    Trevor Seward 

    Hi,

    the links you provided need correction, there is an extra character at the end of them which makes them lead to nowhere.

     

    best thing you can do is to submit a feedback using feedback button on Edge. not sure if there is a problem recording feature on Mac too but in the mini window of feedback, click on attachments, there should be a part that says "recreate my problem". press start recording, reproduce the problem, and then stop.

    it should capture necessary data to help them solve the problem.

     

    do you have an example for "TextBoxFor controls" that we can try and reproduce the issue?

     

     

    • Trevor Seward's avatar
      Trevor Seward
      MVP
      Jan 13, 2021

      HotCakeX yeah I see the extra character... at any rate, I'm posting here at the request of MissyQ.

       

      I don't have a public example. It isn't strictly limited to that control, but is just one example.

      • Trevor Seward's avatar
        Trevor Seward
        MVP
        Jan 25, 2021
        I was able to reproduce this in another context. Copy Link from Edge and then paste into a document in VSCode.

        I don't get the link I copied with Copy Link, but rather content that was previously copied into the clipboard.

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