Live Clipboard

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Live Clipboard is a Microsoft technology that extends copy and paste so you can move data between web apps and between the web and your desktop. It avoids security prompts, making the experience smoother than the usual browser copy/paste.

What it is
- An extensible data format (Live Clipboard XML) plus a small UI layer to manage copy and paste.
- Designed to work with standard JavaScript and CSS, in as many browsers as possible.
- No extra software or browser plug-ins required and it doesn’t access the clipboard without explicit user action.
- Free to use under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License (CC-BY-SA 2.5).

How it works (in simple terms)
- The UI places a hidden input field with a clipboard icon. When you focus it, the page provides the data to copy via OnGetLiveClipboardData.
- The page returns the data, which is serialized to Live Clipboard XML and placed in the input. Using the normal copy command copies that data to the clipboard.
- If you paste, the input’s value changes. The code deserializes the XML back to a LiveClipboardClass object and calls OnHandleLiveClipboardData so the page can use the data as needed (save, display, or send to a server).
- You can define how pasted data is handled, including ignoring unsupported formats.

Keyboard support
- There are functions to trigger copy or paste via the keyboard: InitiateKeyboardCopyToLiveClipboard and InitiateKeyboardPasteFromLiveClipboard.

Compatibility and status
- Verified to work in IE 8 and Mozilla Firefox 3.5.2.
- Aims to run with standard web tech and without installing anything extra.
- Updated specifications, JavaScript, and samples were available around 2009.