Firefox & IE - Copy Context Menu Plugin
I have created a set of browser plugins that are pretty helpful for developers and I thought that I should share them. I have created basically the same plugin for both IE and Firefox. What it does is add a "Copy As Html" and "Copy As Plain Text" to the context (right-click) menu. It is useful if you want to copy the text or underlying html from a web page into word, outlook or visual studio. Below is a setup file that sort of automates the installation. It will install the IE plugin completely and it will copy the file for the Firefox plugin. You will have to manually open the firefox plugin using firefox and choose "Install" to complete the firefox plugin installation. The plug-in should be installed here: "C:\Program Files\Fillmore Technology Group\Utilities\Firefox\copyMenu_- 1.3.0-fx.xpi", but the actual location will be on the bottom of the last form in the setup wizard. Since there are plenty of resources on the web that explain how to program these, I am not going to go into any detail on how it was accomplished. I will say that the end result was pretty simple to do, but finding all the information took a little time.
Copy Menu (MSI Installer) - About 106 KB
Copy Menu (Full Windows Installer) - About 3.39 MB - not recommended
Update: The Firefox plugin can be installed from the Firefox Add-on site (It now works with 3.6): https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/4554
Update: The Firefox plugin can be installed from the Firefox Add-on site (It now works with 3.6): https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/4554
or from here:
Install Extended Copy Menu 1.3 - out dated
Firefox
 | Internet Explorer
 |
posted by quamtar @ 8:09 AM
49 Comments
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49 Comments:
This is a very good idea.
It works very well in Firefox except when the entire line is a link.
On the Firefox page that describes the plug-in, all the links copy perfectly except for "Add your own comment" and "Read all comments".
Other than this one blemish, the plug-in is brilliant. Very helpful!
How can I send you a version of this extension in spanish?
Kraken,
Send it to rccode [at] gmail [dot] com
I have just sent a localized version to the above email address, providing the possibility to get a bunch more translations in one go.
Thank you for the Add-on, what I think will add great value is to be able to copy content, and paste in Word without Word downloading images again. It is really frustrating opening a page with images (slow); copying and pasting into MS Word only to have "MS Word" freeze while downloading the images again. Seems that copy only copies the URL of images, and not the actual content? Seems a waste of resources to download the same images? Is it a feasible option to have a "Copy Downloaded Content" option? I suppose so; if you have someone capable of solving the problem. Thanks for contributing a number off Add-ons that I am using!
Where can i find the code?
What i want.
Select text
Right mouse
menuitem: Google Search
Marco
Sorry about the multiple posts - a combination of blogger, firefox and me was acting weirdly.
Hi,
Great idea!!!
Anyway my point goes to : "Have you build the IE Addon in .NET?" I'm a .NET developer trying to build an IE Addon that insert some lines of javascript inside each page for a particular website.
Can you give some ideas on how to do it? I start looking at BHO but I can not find the way to do what I want.
Hope to hear from you soon. If you don't mind mail me to fernaramburu@hotmail.com
thanks a lot.
Fernando
Hmmm...
I forgot that I already posted a comment
-> 6/05/2007 1:42 PM
But my comment doesn't make much sense to me. Anyway, moving right along...
I can't figure out why links at
http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/dictionaries/difficultwords/data/content_a.html
don't work if you copy html. The complete path is not copied.
example
(x href="/reference/dictionaries/difficultwords/data/d0000100.html")a cappella, a capella(xa)(xbr)
If I copy links using
copy links
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/605
the entire path is copied.
I've had this problem at other sites. What's the problem? What's the solution?
Works Great with Firefox for Mac OSX.Is it possible to take it one step further and have it call (open) an AppleScript application (on my local machine) that gets the clipboard into an AppleScript variable for further processing?
Can't get the difference between the standard 'Copy' and the extra item in my context menu 'Copy plain text'? Can you see any point?
Hi
Great stuff, works flawlessly in Firefox. Would it possible to supress the standard 'copy' it just wastes space now.
or just remove 'Copy as plain text'
Great add-on! Thanks!
One question - what is the name of the BHO? When looking in IE7 Add-ons manager, I don't see it listed.
Extended Copy Menu
Locales in New version on AMO (1.5) works not.
The updated version for download is available here:
http://www.box.net/shared/jr3jkwhwkw
regards,
Steve
Is there a way to have this copy as BBCode/Forum Code?
Mainly the links, such as copying a paragraph from a news story with a couple links inside the paragraph that point to other stories, but format the links at [url='link']text[/url] for a Forum Post?
This would be a Most Excellent Addition!
It would bee nice if "copy as plain text" can overwrite the normal "copy". I mean if "ctrl+c" is using "copy as plain text" (like the extension https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/134 because this is not updated for firefox 3)
I don't get the "Copy as HTML" feature. Doesn't the default copy copy as HTML?
Like many, I'm using this to replace "Copy Plain Text", which is not FF3 compatible.
It works well, though the style guy in me really, really wants to fix the lack of proper first capital letters in "Copy as plain text". It's right in all the screen shots, but apparently the "A" "P" and "T" got kicked to lower case when you added the shortcut help!
And technically, "HTML" should be all caps...
Anyway, no biggie, I'll get used to it :) And again, this saved me in FF3!
Could you include a feature I've been hacking into your extension for a friend, so I don't have to do it every time you release a new one? A friend of mine likes to paste "plain text" quotes from the web, but the problem is a ton of websites these days use "fancy" double quotes, single quotes, "em" dashes, etc, which just don't paste well into vi or your average text editor.... anyway, here is the enhancement to your javascript to do this: (for others that want to hack it yourself, find were your firefox extensions are installed, and drill down all the way to copyMenu.js and replace 'gClipboardHelper.copyString(objSelection);' with:
var str = objSelection.toString();
str = str.replace(/\u2018/g,'\'');
str = str.replace(/\u2019/g,'\'');
str = str.replace(/\u201d/g,'\"');
str = str.replace(/\u201c/g,'\"');
str = str.replace(/\u2011/g,' - ');
str = str.replace(/\u2012/g,' - ');
str = str.replace(/\u2013/g,' - ');
str = str.replace(/\u2014/g,' - ')
gClipboardHelper.copyString(str);
This is HUGE. I need this every day. To be able to copy phone numbers, addresses, directions to a word document, spreadsheet, or other application without the font formatting saves tremendous amounts of time. If you’re a blogger and want to quote from one site without their font formatting, is another use. A person generally has to 1) copy it, 2) paste it to a notepad 3) copy it again, and then 4) paste it where I wanted it to go. Now it’s just 1 and 2 and it will assume the destination’s font formatting, if I have that preset.
I formally used the extension “PlainText” but its not available yet for Firefox 3.0.
I tested the copy HTML with this extension and I’m happily pleased with this too. It copies the page’s html source code of the area you have dragged and copied. I can see how this will be an easy quick way of seeing one little section of a source code without having to scroll down through a whole page of source code.
I wish I could use this extension in every program ever made
I like this extension a lot. Will you update the version so that it installs with Firefox 3.5?
I updated the version info so the plugin will install with firefox 3.5. I have not done much testing, let me know if there are issues.
Hi Quamtar,
Very nice addon.
There seems to be a bug however.
When selecting the text from the "1." until "Raad." on http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010#Januari the links get copied wrong.
In source code they are defined as relative paths (/wiki/Herman_Van_Rompuy) but once you copy them with the addon the should have full paths (http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Van_Rompuy) otherwise the links won't work.
Could you please fix that?
Thanks
Firefox 3.6 support coming soon? Great add-on, by the way.
Great extension. Will you update the version so that it installs with Firefox 3.6?
I have updated the addon site to allow it to be installed on Firefox 3.6
when will you provide for your copy context menu to be compatible with the new Firefox 3.6?
Thanks so much for updating this for 3.6. I use it all the time.
Extended Copy Menu is not compatible with FF 3.5.8 Can you make this compatible.I haven't upgraded to FF 3.6 because of several add-ons I use are not yet compatible with FF 3.6
Thank you
This is possibly the single most useful add-on I have ever encountered. Unfortunately, Firefox 3.6 won't even let me try to install it--it just says that the add-on is for an older version of Firefox. If I go to the version history page and install the newest "experimental" version, it starts the install but then fails because the add-on is supposedly incompatible with 3.6.
What should I do?
I have Firefox 3.6. When I go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addons/versions/4554 and click on "Let me install this experimental extension" , it doesn't work, and says:
Incompatible Extension
----------------------
Extended Copy Menu 1.6 could not be installed because it is not compatible with Firefox 3.6.
How do I get around this?
I love this add-on but can't get it to install under FF3.6, not even 1.6 (get a "cannot install because not compatible with 3.6" error).
Please help.
Best regards,
Jim Lockhart
The Firefox addin site has gone back to 1.5
addons.mozilla.org is showing this add-on as "This add-on is for older versions of Firefox".. can you please fix this as I'd love to use the add-on
I must be missing something... Looking at the Firefox addons site, I only see v1.5 of this extension, and it is disabled (on the site) for Firefox 3.6
How do I get this re-installed (now that 3.6 totally hosed my previous FF installation?)
Thanks for a great extension by the way!
Hey Ryan - follow-up to my earlier comment... I finally found v1.6 'experimental' under the "view all versions" link, but Firefox 3.6 still tells me it's incompatible and won't install it. Just FYI...
Sorry Everyone. I accidentally deleted the 1.6 version and when I re-added it some dev at mozilla rejected it because the methods live in the global namespace, its an easy enough fix but I havent had time. I'll get to it soon (today I hope). I do have to say that I'm pissed that they wont allow the same plugin thats been there for months (years?). If you want go ahead and bitch them out.
its still not working...in 3.6
I'm frustrated - There is no way to download this great add on. I'm using FF 5.8 and the add-on page says that this is for older versions of FF.
I'm running into the same problem that a couple of others have mentioned. I have Extended Copy Menu 1.6 installed on two computers (one using Firefox 3.5 and one using Firefox 3.6).
It works great. However, addons.mozilla.com has reverted back to offering ECM 1.5, which is only good through Firefox 3.0.
When will you release Chrome extended copy menu?
Yours is one of my beloved extension...
I have been a user of your copy menu extension. An Excellent Extension. However, the recent browser upgrade broke your extension. You have any plans of making it work on FF 3.6.3. I'm currently handicapped. :(
-Venky
Is the source code to this plugin open access ? Is it available under any license ?
Ryan, the reason people are having problems installing on Firefox versions such as 3.6.3 is probably because you set the maximum version (em:maxVersion RDF-XML tag) to 3.6 in the install.rdf file. In the 1.5 version, it said that the maximum version was “3.0pre” (I don’t know what your 1.6 says because I couldn’t find where to download it directly).
Instead, you should always set the maximum version to something like “3.6.*” instead of “3.6”, since the maximum version means just that: the maximum version that the XPI installer will install on. “3.6” means it will install on any version greater than or equal to the minVersion, but less than or equal to the maxVersion, 3.6 in this case. It will not install on any version that is at all greater than the maxVersion!
This means that even, oh, say, FF 3.6.0.1 would not allow an extension specified with maxVersion “3.6” to install, even though such a version of FF would be only a very minor bug fix or security release over 3.6 and almost certainly not “break” the extension.
The asterisk is similar to wildcard and means any version that begins with the numbers prior to the asterisk, with the asterisk itself representing basically infinity (“3.6.*” is basically equal to “3.6.999…”).
To those who want it to work now on their systems: use 7-Zip or some other Zip-handling program that lets you edit text files within .ZIP archives, and open the .XPI (which is actually internally a .ZIP archive, with a special “.XPI” extension) directly in that program, and edit “install.rdf” as I just described.
This suddenly stopped working today. Says it is incompatible.
How to install a plugin without great difficulty:
1. Open the link "View all versions of" bottom of the page (https: / / addons.mozilla.org/ru/firefox/addons/versions/4554)
2. At the very top of the window that opens is "Version 1.6" and a button with a proposal to add to firefox "experimental"
3. Click on this button with the right mouse button and select "Save Target As"
4. Save file proposed "extended_copy_menu-1.6-fx + mz.xpi" in the desired location
5 .* The most interesting * rename the file extension from ". Xpi" into ". Zip"
6. View the archive (with WinRAR ex.) and find in the root of the archive file "install.rdf"
7. Take it from the archive into desired location
8. Open with Notepad (or rename to .Txt and then open with notepad)
9. Find the line "em:maxVersion 3.0 .* / em: maxVersion" and replace the 3.0 to 4.0 (example). and save.
10. Rename the file back to .Rdf (if renamed), and put the formation in the archive to its original a place with overwriting.
11. Rename the file "extended_copy_menu-1.6-fx + mz.zip" back into "extended_copy_menu-1.6-fx + mz.xpi"
12. In Firefox's address bar enter "file://path where the file is/extended_copy_menu-1.6-fx + mz.xpi"
13. Act as if the default installation of plug-in.
14. Say HURRAH! and enjoy.
Hi All:
I know it took forever, especially considering that it was not much work at all. But I finally fixed this fiasco and uploaded a new version. It is currently under review. Prior to approval you should be able to install it from this page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addons/versions/4554
Any chance of extending the copy context menu extension to Thunderbird?
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