OneNote source links behaviour changed since updating to Firefox 157

[gchen]

Since updating to Firefox 157, the behavior of copy pasting text from a webpage into OneNote has changed.

Before (and in other browsers): you would get a From <full webpage> text appended afterwards.

After in Firefox 157: The source URL only shows the domain name, for example From <https://connect.mozilla.org> instead of the full link.

Personally I would prefer the original behavior.

[xe99da0]

I've already noticed this change—in version 157, the source link has been shortened.Why?

e.g. in my onenote version(Microsoft® OneNote® LTSCMSO ( 2408 Build 16.0.17932.20910) 64 bit) From <https://connect.mozilla.org> instead of the full link.

[plusminus_]

I also noticed this and have been trying to resolve it since last night, to no avail!

I tested a few versions of Firefox ESR Portable and found the links were fine on 153.3.0 but not 153.4.0 - though I don't know which normal version numbers these correspond to!

I tried to diff the prefs.js for 153.3.0 and 153.4.0 and didn't see any significant differences. I also checked for any prefs that looked relevant here: https://cat-in-136.github.io but none of the ones I tried changing affected the result. So I don't know what has changed.

IIRC I tried changing:

• browser.contentanalysis.interception_point.clipboard.plain_text_only
• browser.contentanalysis.interception_point.clipboard_copy.enabled
• dom.clipboard.customFormatSupport.enabled

(hmm, I thought I already had a profile here. I must be confusing it with SUMO.)

[xe99da0]

Versions 153.3.0 and 153.4.0 — this information is very useful.
If I have time, I'll get an AI to compare them and see what's changed.

[plusminus_]

I don't know if this will help, but these are the most recent commits that may relate to the clipboard: https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Amozilla-firefox%2Ffirefox+clipboard&type=commits&s=committer-date...

but this is too much information for me to deal with right now 😅

[xe99da0]

I checked the commit , and it looks like there are quite a few changes.

[gchen]

Good find. Seems like it also censors copied links in private browsing mode as well so none even show up. 

[MechtEngineer]

I also would prefer the original behaviour, or at least the option to turn off this new behaviour. For some things, I'm switching to using another browser, because when I copy excerpts of text from webpages, then I don't have to manually copy the original URL. Now it is very inefficient for me to copy things from Firefox into OneNote, as I have to manually copy and paste the URL as an additional step.

It appears like the issue is by design. I don't understand the reason why this has been changed with no option for a user to opt out.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2079010

The clipboard data comes from nsCopySupport::GetDocumentSourceURL, which was changed in bug 2067254. Using the origin rather than URI was deliberate.

https://github.com/w3c/clipboard-apis/issues/244#issuecomment-5693406824

We will not include the whole URL as source information, instead we strip it down to just the origin, e.g. http://example.org

How can we raise this with Firefox developers to ask for an "opt-out" option?

[plusminus_]

Given that the change was deliberate, it is unlikely that the capability will be reinstated 😞

So I asked about workarounds (I envisioned a userscript) and eventually ended up with a vibe-coded AutoHotkey script, which is working well for me, on Windows anyway.

It requires AutoHotkey v2.0, and a library for UI Automation from Github. I have made a Gist with links, an explanation and a video here: https://gist.github.com/p1usminus/2306426d9198cd499184c793deed8b55