How to copy and paste old style on windows tablet in desktop mode. ( bounding handles problem)
I have a tablet with you use in windows desktop mode. Now somewhere around firefox 51 things broke.
Am now stuck with a terrible annoying, irritating, clubsy, frustrating complex way to copy and paste text from webpage. In the past it did work easy, just select the text with your finger. Easy and fast. Now it works more like this. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-copy-and-paste-text-android I can tell you, that way of copy text is not working !Most of the time the bounding handle are already on top of each other. It's also a very slow way of doing soemthing simple.
With bounding handles i mean the blue balloons that are upside dopwn and markthe begin and end of the text.
So, how do i turnen the trouble makers of so i get the old copy and past back on webpages. So it's also easy again to delete a search result to type a new one. I tried it long enough and the only get more frustrating. And not found and solution.
All Replies (12)
Many have had trouble with copy/paste between programs, Copy from the original. Paste to a 'word' type program. Now copy from 'word' to where you want to go.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/copy-as-plain-text/ Copy As Plain Text Removes formatting from copied text.
Sorry, fredmcD. that's not the problem. The problem is the new way on my tablet of selecting the text. It's changed in firefox since short for me. You need to hold your finger on the screen until a word is selected. Then you need to move on the screen a begin marker and end market.
Sadly i cannot find any example on the internet and a screen capture did fail to. It only happens in firefox, so i do not expoect it's soemthing from windows.
Firefox 52 turned on touchscreen auto-detection on the Windows version of Firefox. Could that be a factor? Here's where you find that setting:
(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button promising to be careful.
(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste touch and pause while the list is filtered
(3) Double-click the dom.w3c_touch_events.enabled preference and edit the value to 0 (zero) and then click OK. The options are:
* 0 => disable touch
* 1 => enable touch
* 2 => auto-detect whether the system supports touch (default in Fx52)
I don't know whether that will take effect immediately or after you exit and start Firefox up again. Does that have any effect of selecting by touch?
I tried that setting before. But it did not seems to have any impact. I go test it next time again when i have the device in my hands.
Let you know.
Does the tablet let touch work like a mouse in the sense that a double-tap (double-click) selects the word below the finger and a triple-tap (triple-click) selects a sentence or paragraph?
For comparison: double-tap works on Android, triple-tap doesn't.
Modified by jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
Hmm, left mouse is short tab. Right mouse is press and hold the screen until rigth mouse menu appears. Or in this case the select markers to. I never use double tapping.
Triple not exists as far i know, never used that
Ok, i tried dom.w3c_touch_events.enabled 0 disable everything. as far is ee also the option to select text so you can copy it and 1 and 2 don the same.
I have now add a scan from the tablet screen. sorry it's B/W. Look for the selected word "browser" and then you have the annoying begin and end selectors.
Hopefull that explains the problem better.
That's similar to Firefox 53 for Android. If you didn't see those before, touch must have been more fully disabled so that the finger behaved like a mouse button down. I don't know if there is a setting for that. In another thread, someone asked about dom.w3c_touch_events.expose but I don't know whether that would have an effect.
dom.w3c_touch_events.expose is not in about:config at all.
Thanks for checking. Perhaps the other user had it left over from an earlier version of Firefox. (Even some obsolete settings will carry forward if they are customized.)
What do you think was the last version of Firefox that worked the other way? To test without disturbing your current installation, you can use the "Portable" build, which is designed to keep the program, settings, and data files all in one folder.
Prior to Firefox 51 (the language is indicated in the file name):
Firefox 50.0.2: https://sourceforge.net/projects/portableapps/files/Mozilla%20Firefox%2C%20Portable%20Ed./Mozilla%20Firefox%2C%20Portable%20Edition%2050.0.2/
Firefox 49.0.2: https://sourceforge.net/projects/portableapps/files/Mozilla%20Firefox%2C%20Portable%20Ed./Mozilla%20Firefox%2C%20Portable%20Edition%2049.0.2/
Ok, i did run both versions from USB stick. Firefox 50.0.2 Not show the balloons, but copy and paste is broken to. I cannot select text anymore.
Firefox 49.0.2 is the same result. No selecting text anymore.
Hmm, maybe something changed in a recent Windows update that is causing Firefox to behave a bit differently.
Alternately, do you have any add-ons in your regular installation that might have facilitated touch mousing? That might have been how it worked before.
Unfortunately I don't have access to any touch screen devices myself.