Reviews for Selection Context Search
Selection Context Search by ContainersOnTheGo
Review by Sean Ryan
Rated 5 out of 5
by Sean Ryan, 7 years agoI love this Selection Context Search (SCS) extension and like that you're regularly adding new/improved features. It's brilliant that you respond speedily to people's review comments and always positively. I use it both in Firefox and Chrome.
*** Feature Request ***
I am a fan of the "Autocopy" function (Options: Copy the selected text to clipboard). However, I often mess things up when I come to paste from clipboard into a text field within the browser: as I highlight the target text (i.e. I wish to overwrite this text), the selection action itself copies the TARGET text to clipboard, replacing the clipboard SOURCE text I intended to paste, and so when I press Ctrl-V, the same text is pasted back and I've lost what was in the clipboard. That's not the extension's "fault"... it's me being a dumb user who doesn't think to blank out target text before copying something to clipboard (from either in the browser or any other application).
=== Solution 1 - easy, but incomplete ===
Perhaps under "Options: Copy the selected text to clipboard", you could also provide a user-selectable modifier key (Ctrl / Alt / Shift) to temporarily suspend "Autocopy" so that when I press that key during a text highlight (via mouse drag or double-click) the extension won't copy the text to clipboard.
Of course I'm still likely to regularly forget to press the "suspend autocopy" key... and I've tried to figure out if there's a way to solve the problem of unintended overwrite of clipboard contents. My super-duper solution is...
=== Solution 2 - complex, complete ===
1) Under "Options: Copy the selected text to clipboard" (Autocopy), provide new user-selectable Options "Paste from Saved Clipboard - Popup" & "Paste from Saved Clipboard - Sub-menu". Alternatively, these could be provided via a new Search TYPE "Paste from Saved Clipboard" so it could be positioned on the sub-menu and set to show in popup just like other standard entries. I'd rely on the popup option because that would be my visual cue/reminder whenever I highlight text for pasting over.
2) If Autocopy is enabled, SCS would always first save existing clipboard contents into the extension's own storage area before copying the current selection to clipboard. Then, whenever a user clicks on "Paste from Saved Clipboard", SCS would use the text it has saved in it's extension "saved clipboard" storage rather than what it has itself just copied to clipboard from the selection.
- What if "Paste from Saved Clipboard" is chosen but Autocopy isn't set on? Just paste direct from System clipboard. Unless you choose to prevent the user selecting option "Paste from Saved Clipboard" except when Autocopy has also been selected.
- Can we be 100% sure that the saved clipboard storage in the extension is secure and could not be accessed by any other extension / browser code? If not, then we'd need a warning note in an 'i' (info) flag next to the existing option "Copy the selected text to clipboard" so users would know to de-select this option if working with sensitive data. Or perhaps the saved clipboard can be set to self-destruct after xxx seconds?
Understandably you may feel the suggestions are beyond the scope of your extension. It's been fun thinking it up anyway!
Selection Context Search 5.18 / Firefox 58.0.2 (64-bit) / Windows 10 Home Version 1709
*** Feature Request ***
I am a fan of the "Autocopy" function (Options: Copy the selected text to clipboard). However, I often mess things up when I come to paste from clipboard into a text field within the browser: as I highlight the target text (i.e. I wish to overwrite this text), the selection action itself copies the TARGET text to clipboard, replacing the clipboard SOURCE text I intended to paste, and so when I press Ctrl-V, the same text is pasted back and I've lost what was in the clipboard. That's not the extension's "fault"... it's me being a dumb user who doesn't think to blank out target text before copying something to clipboard (from either in the browser or any other application).
=== Solution 1 - easy, but incomplete ===
Perhaps under "Options: Copy the selected text to clipboard", you could also provide a user-selectable modifier key (Ctrl / Alt / Shift) to temporarily suspend "Autocopy" so that when I press that key during a text highlight (via mouse drag or double-click) the extension won't copy the text to clipboard.
Of course I'm still likely to regularly forget to press the "suspend autocopy" key... and I've tried to figure out if there's a way to solve the problem of unintended overwrite of clipboard contents. My super-duper solution is...
=== Solution 2 - complex, complete ===
1) Under "Options: Copy the selected text to clipboard" (Autocopy), provide new user-selectable Options "Paste from Saved Clipboard - Popup" & "Paste from Saved Clipboard - Sub-menu". Alternatively, these could be provided via a new Search TYPE "Paste from Saved Clipboard" so it could be positioned on the sub-menu and set to show in popup just like other standard entries. I'd rely on the popup option because that would be my visual cue/reminder whenever I highlight text for pasting over.
2) If Autocopy is enabled, SCS would always first save existing clipboard contents into the extension's own storage area before copying the current selection to clipboard. Then, whenever a user clicks on "Paste from Saved Clipboard", SCS would use the text it has saved in it's extension "saved clipboard" storage rather than what it has itself just copied to clipboard from the selection.
- What if "Paste from Saved Clipboard" is chosen but Autocopy isn't set on? Just paste direct from System clipboard. Unless you choose to prevent the user selecting option "Paste from Saved Clipboard" except when Autocopy has also been selected.
- Can we be 100% sure that the saved clipboard storage in the extension is secure and could not be accessed by any other extension / browser code? If not, then we'd need a warning note in an 'i' (info) flag next to the existing option "Copy the selected text to clipboard" so users would know to de-select this option if working with sensitive data. Or perhaps the saved clipboard can be set to self-destruct after xxx seconds?
Understandably you may feel the suggestions are beyond the scope of your extension. It's been fun thinking it up anyway!
Selection Context Search 5.18 / Firefox 58.0.2 (64-bit) / Windows 10 Home Version 1709