Does this browser feature exist?

[barking_iguana]

When I have tabular data in the clipboard, I want to be able to paste it as a table into Web forums that accept HTML. The browser should know enough to put in all the tr and td tags, which I should then be able to edit if I don't like the broser's guess at the formatting. Spreadsheets (OOo-Calc and Excel, at least) already do the equivalent in one form or another. I don't see why browsers can't.

If such a feature is available (and not infuriatingly buggy) for Firefox or IE, that would be enough to make me give up Opera.

Comments

[chemoelectric.livejournal.com]

I wouldn’t use Internet Exploiter, anyway, where not necessary.

[chemoelectric.livejournal.com]

Why not write a script of some sort to output the table code from a spreadsheet program?

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

An application can put data into the paste buffer in multiple formats and applications can state their preference. So, a spreadsheet could put it in HTML, Rich Text, ASCII, and as a MS-Excel grid. The app can then say, "I would prefer MS-Excel, but I'll take ASCII if that's all I got".

So the question becomes, what should a browser request? It would definitely say "ASCII as a last resort", but how can a browser know that this particular text input box accepts HTML? Currently there isn't a way to label a text input box with a hint that the future use of this box will be for HTML. It would be bad.

If you've used docs.google.com, the spreadsheet is able to do cut-and-paste between spreadsheets and get it right, but they aren't doing simple spreadsheets.

So, what I end up using is MS-Excel, which pastes to tab-separated ASCII... which I paste into a program I wrote that turns TSV into HTML tables... which I put back into the paste buffer. It makes it a multi-step process, which sucks. However, you are absolutely right that browsers should be able to do this... they just don't.

(Oh, and one way they could do it is right-click menu could have a "paste as HTML table" option... I think Windows permits people to write plug-ins that extend that menu. However, a quick search doesn't find any.)

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was a right-click choice I was imagining. As many Firefox extensions use, and as my free Windows Explorer (I forget the name) puts into the OS's UI for folders, etc.

[blackmonkeymage.livejournal.com]

There's this Firefox extension called Xinha Here which is considerably more elaborate than what you asked for. With this, you can right-click an input field, click "Open Xinha Here", see an editor pop up, paste the table into it, click "OK" and you have an HTML table in your input field. Kind of roundabout, but maybe the most convenient option currently available. Here's a test case, from OOo-spreadsheet:

hi, I am	a test table	for Xinha
with arbitrary formatting

 

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

Very cool. I just tested it.

I'm not yet ready to face the headache of trasporting all my bookmarks and whatever of my opera cutomization I can, but I can now open Firefox for this task, just as i do for the few things that don't work right with Opera.

Thank you.