Javascript: Copy Text to Clipboard – Not anymore

In a previous post (Javascript: Copy Text to Clipboard), I described a method for using Javascript to copy text to a user’s clipboard.

Unfortunately, this method no longer works.  It relied on flash allowing script access to the user’s clipboard, and (with the release of flash 10) that is no longer the case.

Flash 10 requires that a user’s action originate in flash in order to gain access to the clipboard.  This means that IE is now the only browser that can access the clipboard from Javascript.  So unless IE is the only browser you care about, you’re out of luck using Javascript to access the clipboard.

The solution?  Write a flash application to handle copying data to the user’s clipboard.