Announcing a new way to paste URLs, Link format!

[MissyQ]

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 experience.

What did we find?

We found that one has to regularly edit the URL they copy to make them understandable for sharing or remove seemingly extra parameters. This led us to what we call Link format, an easily readable URL that also preserves the details of the URL.

We also learned that nearly everyone, at one point, wants the full, plain-text URL exactly as it was copied. When one first copies a URL, it’s not always obvious that the full text is needed. Other times, it’s desired to have both a readable format and the plain-text version.

With both in mind, we are excited to not only introduce Link format for URLs but also options in the context menu that lets you paste both styles of URL regardless of your default paste setting!

How can you use it?

Starting this week, you should see Link format available on Windows devices running the Canary channel of Microsoft Edge. When you copy from the address bar and right-click to paste, you will see that Paste now has a fly-out menu and that plain-text URL pasting is now Ctrl+Shift+V.

Jump list options from right-click, hovering over "Paste as" to show new options for pasting, "Plain text", "Link (Default)", and "Change default".

If you want to revert this change, you can head to edge://settings/shareCopyPaste (or navigate through the … menu > Settings > Share, Copy & Paste) and select Plain text as the default for your URLs. Once you do that, Ctrl+V will be for the plain-text URL.

Screenshot of the settings page for edge://settings/shareCopyPaste

What’s next?

Right now, this feature is only available on Windows devices. We are working on bringing this to Mac. Additionally, it’s important to note that this only works for URLs copied from the address bar at this time. Link format support will be available for in-page links soon.

There’s a few things we’re aware of, too, and are working on getting these resolved:

• When Link format is default, pasting into a LinkedIn post is resulting only in the title appearing without a hyperlink. We’re working closely with the LinkedIn team to address this.
• When Link format is default, pasting into a Word document using Word Online is resulting only in the title appearing without a hyperlink. We’re working closely with the Word team to address this.
• In general, some sites or web apps may introduce their own formatting on paste. We want to know when you notice this, so please submit feedback letting us know what you’re seeing (Alt+Shift+I or … menu > Help and feedback > Send feedback).

In addition to the above, we want to know if you see encounter any issues with this feature! If you have it set to Link format as the default and notice anything amiss while pasting, let us know via the browser so that the team can dig into what might be happening.

Thanks!

- The Microsoft Edge Team

[#2]

@rshupak thank you for the details, Rich!  We will look into it.

One follow-up questions for you - If you change the default to be Plain Text, does copy / paste work as you would expect (ie: how Edge used to handle non-ASCII characters in the URL)?

As for link elements within the HTML body, yes, we are aware that the enhanced formats do not yet apply.  We are testing that behavior internally before we roll it out externally, but rest assured that was part of the plan (links will be handled consistently, in a holistic manner) and the setting, the "paste as" context menu options and the shortcut keys will all behave consistently for both URLs in the Address Bar and for links on the page.

Finally, I hear you on the Ctrl + Shift +V behavior for plain text and that it's not perfectly consistent.  Ctrl + V is also imperfect in some cases.  The web is a bit of a wild west with how paste is handled and as you point out, there are some Win32 apps that do their own clipboard manipulations as well. This is one of the reasons we offer the setting to revert back to plain text by default.  If your most common work flows are on sites or in apps that don't behave as you would expect with the new Ctrl + V or the fallback Ctrl +Shift + V shortcut keys, you can revert to the previous behavior in Edge settings.

In fact, that's why I'm particularly interested in how your particular example behaves when you change the default back to Plain Text.  

Thanks again,

Jared

[#3]

@Nico_Popy Merci!

I will respond in English as my French is not the best (though I understood most of your post by reading it and the rest I was able to translate with Microsoft Translator on Bing).

As Missy points out in the original post, our research showed that many users prefer a human readable link than a long URL even with a preview.  However, we also found that some users really do appreciate the preview that some sites generate, as you clearly do.  You are not alone :).

In our testing, we have found that most sites that generate a preview image still do with the new link format.  That's not 100% consistent however.  Thank you for letting us know that you use Twitter and Slack and that you would appreciate previews for those sites as well, even with the new format.

We of course will follow up with Twitter and Slack regarding generating previews for the new Link format and we will follow up with other sites we find either in our testing or via feedback (so please keep the feedback coming)!

Finally, if you prefer the plain text format which will result in previews generated by Twitter and Slack, more often than you prefer the link format, you can always change your default back to Plain Text in edge://settings/shareCopyPaste

Merci boucoup!

Jared

[#4]

@JaredB81 As I expect, yes, as long as I stop expecting to see the same IRI in the clipboard that I see in the address bar.  I do have the expectation that the text I see and select is what I copy and I can get almost what I want with more effort by selecting the address bar text excluding the initial "h".  Please, add an option to edge://settings/shareCopyPaste to control whether IRIs can be copied as is.

I forgot that I had written a tool long ago to retrieve arbitrary clipboard data so I looked at the contents of the "Link Preview Format" and "Titled Hyperlink Format" formats.  These are identical to one another and to the CF_HTML "HTML Format" contents.  Is there a scenario where they differ or did you just create another format so that the option exposed by edge://settings/shareCopyPaste  will only affect clients that support CF_HTML while having no effect elsewhere?  And then, why two new formats?

Given that with the plain text option selected, the two renamed HTML variants still exist, I expect there will come a time that some app supports these new formats and the Edge option will be considered broken because it is no longer controlling since it affects CF_HTML consumers only.  What am I missing?

I have no concern with Win32 apps having "their own clipboard manipulations".  There are several specific concerns I do have.

Ctrl+Shift+V is not a standard.  Edge documentation should not suggest it is and, more importantly, should not assume its existence as a mitigation for issues that arise.

Edge's context menu added Paste as plain text.  This is limiting.  There are plenty of examples where the clipboard contains a combination of text, images, and HTML, all of which can be consumed by Edge.  Why not just implement Paste Special, a well known function, so that you don't need a unique menu for all non-default formats.  You can still keep Ctrl+Shift+V as a shortcut for CF_UNICODETEXT.

Because Edge now copies HTML where it used to copy text only increases the need for users to override the default to get text.  Paste Special and Ctrl+Shift+V only paste the most recent clipboard item.  Win+V which gives access to the clipboard history doesn't have paste special variants.  Worse, as the screenshot I shared before shows, when the clipboard history item contains text and HTML, the Win+V UI displays the text but selecting this will paste the HTML.  This is a task for the team that owns Win+V but Edge's new behavior exasperates the issue.

Finally, why isn't Edge creating a CFSTR_INETURLW clipboard item for this.  This format contains a link and a title.  It is a format that Edge already supports with Copy Image.

Rich

[#5]

@Nico_Popy Looks like the latest version of Edge Dev (Version 87.0.637.0 (Official build) dev (64-bit)) fixes the normal "Ctrl + v" but broke "Ctrl + Shift + v"

[#6]

@JaredB81 I just encountered a new complication.  I copied a link to a bookmark within a Wikipedia page.  The URL of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NewYork%E2%80%93Presbyterian_Hospital#Weill_Cornell_Medical_Center when pasted as a link appears as NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital - Wikipedia which drops the visual indication that it is to a bookmark.

Rich

[#7]

Plain text links are a great help, many thanks for doing this!  I appreciate you making plain text links throughout Microsoft applications and especially for One Drive links!!

Fire it up!!!@MissyQ 

[#8]

Thanks, Rich. Good catch on the bookmark indicator.

Also, I read your format questions above. I'll talk to the dev team. Thanks again for the feedback!

[#9]

Thank you, @dannydwarren.  Would you mind describing how Ctrl + Shift + V is not working for you?  What are your exact steps to reproduce the issue?

Thanks!
Jared 

[#10]

We are glad you like the feature, @kwright62! Thanks for the feedback. 

[#11]

So it looks like it depends on the site. Some work and some don't :(

Maybe pipes '|' break it?

[#12]

Thank you again, @dannydwarren.

Yes, it is dependent on the site into which you are pasting.  In our testing, we found most work well, however there has been some feedback on this thread of some cases that do not work as expected. 

We are working to make this work well on as many sites as possible.

Can you give me a bit more information about the case that didn't work well for you?  What site were you trying to paste it into? 

[#13]

@MissyQ  This doesn't work in Google Hangouts/Gchat within gmail. It results in text only and it wasn't intuitive to figure out what was going on.

[#14]

Thank you, @dcephilpott!  We've taken note of this.

Note that you can use Ctrl + Shift + V or you can right-click, select "Paste as" and choose "plain text" to paste the plain text URL into Google Hangouts.

If Google Hangouts is a place you paste URLs into very frequently, you can also change your default back to plain text in edge://settings/shareCopyPaste  

Thanks again for the feedback!

[#15]

This solves a problem I didn't know I had!

Why hasn't pasting links always worked like this?? Of course, there will always be the dinosaurs who don't like anything changing :)

Thanks

[#16]

Thank you, @CSearle! We are glad you are happy with this feature!

Note that some people have workflows that aren't working.  There are always the folks that just dislike change, as you correctly pointed out, however we are listening carefully to those who are running into issues as well. Our goal is for everyone to be as satisfied as you are :).

Thank you again for the feedback!
Jared

[#17]

I was part of a call where you asked for input on sharing content. I suggested using Open Graph meta data (which is what Facebook and Twitter use for when you share a link). I hope this is what's coming.

[#18]

@rjpaulsen Is it common for the title element and the og:title property to differ?

[#19]

It's more important to additionally grab description and image and whatever else the og is offering.

[#20]

I have to admit, I never knew I needed this feature until I started using it and now I see how useful it is in my everyday usage, it just fits right in my workflow, automatically!

[#21]

@rjpaulsen Currently they only share text and title so the rest do not matter.  What you describe is useful in other contexts but I believe it would break the scenario for which this currently applies.  Before this change, if you copied from the address bar or link on a page and pasted it into a rich text document (e.g. HTML email, Word), the URL only would be pasted as text.  Now Edge adds HTML to the clipboard as well which is selected in priority to plain text when pasting.  In these scenarios the same hyperlink is pasted but the displayed text changes from the page URL to the page title.  The last thing I want is to see the graphic and description that you see when you use the share charm which does use the OG properties.

Is this the behavior that you want when copying and pasting links?

Now, I would like to see this full info when using the following which wasn't even updated to support the additional functionality of copying from the address bar.

OK, Edge Canary and/or this site is broken and I can't paste a screen clipping of the share UI which as a "Copy Link" feature which is limited in functionality.  It looks like I may have been successful in attaching it.

Rich