

Goodbye Outlook - Gmail now lets you paste images directly from clipboard - archon810
http://beerpla.net/2011/04/06/goodbye-outlook-i-dont-need-you-anymore-gmail-now-lets-you-paste-images-directly-from-clipboard/

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zavulon
Half a year ago, I would've pumped my fist and screamed "Hell yes". That was
the biggest feature I've missed in Outlook.

However, Gmail has been so excruciatingly slow that a month ago, I've switched
back to Outlook (Outlook for Mac 2011), and haven't looked back since. It
feels really good to use an email client again that responds to what I do
_instantenously_. Web email clients still have a way to go.

~~~
d_r
This is interesting. Are you using Firefox by any chance? I was incredibly
frustrated with Gmail speed on Firefox for a couple of years, but after
switching to Chrome haven't seen a problem on any of my boxes.

~~~
Garbage
More specifically, if you have Firebug, then it slows down Gmail considerably.

~~~
roel_v
But gmail detects it, and tells you about it - at least it did for me.

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blub
Native e-mail clients still have the advantage of working with any e-mail
server, including those that don't serve ads based on analyzing my e-mails.

The whole local e-mail folder can be backed up to your favourite online backup
if you feel that it's not safe to keep just a local copy.

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psykotic
Here's the one thing about Gmail that drives me nuts: It doesn't let you
preview its line wrapping. This is terrible when you're including bits of code
in an email. How hard could it be? You could even pull it off half-decently
with Greasemonkey.

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eli
Ability to drag images is not what's keeping people on Outlook.

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tapp
Can someone here confirm this is actually working for them? (Paste an image
from the clipboard, send the email, check that the inline image was actually
attached)

It appears to me that FF4 is merely displaying the clipboard image in the
rteditor in draft mode, but it is not actually attached to the email when
sent.

~~~
redstripe
I didn't for me. Looking in my sent box the message had an inline stream
rather than an attachment:

<img
src="data:image/jpeg;base64,/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQAAAQABAAD/7QAcUGhvdG9zaG9wIDMuMAA4QklNBAQAAAAAAAD/2wBDAAMCAgICAgMCAgIDAwMDBAcEBAQEBAgGBgUHCgkKCg...

~~~
guelo
Same here. Looking at the email source the MIME looks like it should work, but
for some reason clients aren't interpreting it as HTML.

    
    
      Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=000e0cd3282edb3e4e04a04d2812
      
      --000e0cd3282edb3e4e04a04d2812
      Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
      
      
      
      --000e0cd3282edb3e4e04a04d2812
      Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
      Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
      
      <img src=3D"data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAABJ8AAAQaCAIAAABik=
      k5NAAAgAElEQVR4nOzdd1QbZ77wcZK9e7O7d7PZTbmbZN+N49gG9xLHveACmOYKGIONe6V3MO42=

~~~
archon810
I just posted an update with some findings - basically, those "3D" and =\r\n
characters that something is adding (somewhere in Gmail) are messing
everything up. We're _this_ close to a working version of this...

~~~
guelo
Oh yea, I didn't notice that 3D. It's weird because ascii 3D is just an =
sign.

~~~
thwarted
=3D indicates quoted-printable encoding for 7-bit transports.

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lini
Are you sure this is a Gmail feature and not a Firefox feature? I have been
able to paste images into RTEs (rich text editors) since Firefox 3. If the
image comes from the clipboard, Firefox will add the image data inline. It
works in all RTEs I use - e.g. <http://ckeditor.com/demo> ,
[http://demos.telerik.com/aspnet-
ajax/editor/examples/default...](http://demos.telerik.com/aspnet-
ajax/editor/examples/default/defaultcs.aspx)

Since the src of the image is inline, you can save/send it as part of the HTML
output of the editor - no attachments or separate upload is needed.

~~~
archon810
I can't test this now, but I remember trying it many times in Firefox, and
every time I'd get a little icon that showed a little broken image. It was
only after the Firefox 4 upgrade, that it started working (well in gmail's
case, kind of working).

Having looked into what gets sent, it is definitely a Firefox thing, but for
me, it only started doing it with 4.0, so hence this post.

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ahrjay
Here's some interesting observations, this will work on any document that is
in designMode or any element that has contenteditable attribute.

Firefox doesn't have the clipboardData interface like IE, Chrome and Safari
have so it must be built into Firefox. From a quick look it seems like it
doesn't expose the stream data to JavaScript which is unfortunate, I would
love for this to be available.

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aymeric
Finally! Now my screenshot workflow is down to two steps:

Win+S (OneNote screenshot feature) CTRL+V

~~~
rodh257
Snipping tool (Vista/7) has similar functionality, I keep it pinned to start
menu, though more often than now I use Alt + PrintScrn to just copy the active
window to clipboard.

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sigzero
You can drag and drop them too. Just found that out the other day.

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rdamico
This is a big step forward for Gmail. Now if they could just add some simple
mail merge functionality, that would be another super-useful feature.

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quannum
I tried to drag a file onto a gmail message the other day. It didn't work. Now
_that_ would get rid of Outlook for a lot of people.

~~~
shrikant
This feature's been available on modern browsers for nearly a year now..

[http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/drag-and-drop-
attachme...](http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/drag-and-drop-attachments-
onto-messages.html)

~~~
archon810
Yeah, that works fine, you just have to drag it into the area that gets
highlighted for dropping.

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mitali
This has been a Gmail Labs for a long while... I have it enabled for all 3 of
my gmail accounts for a while now.

~~~
rodh257
Has it? I've specifically checked for it on a number of occasions. I've seen
the ability to drag and drop images there, but not paste a screenshot from
clipboard.

~~~
archon810
There is no labs project like that. You're correct - I've been also checking
for ages.

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ronnier
Is not working for me. I also use Google for my domain, if that matters.

