Copying images from MSIE to Word 2007



  • I thought I'd share this one as it's pretty weird.

    If you right-click an image in Internet Explorer 8, and select Copy, it puts both HTML and the image into the clipboard. In my test case the HTML was just the image tag (!) but somehow you can end up pasting JavaScript into Word documents as well that remains perfectly preserved. (Thanks goes to True Launch Bar's ClipBoard Manager for readily indicating exactly what was in the clipboard.)

    This only came to light when certain Word 2007 documents were somehow stopping Internet Explorer from opening on a PC. Click Start > Internet … nothing. Close Word, IE suddenly springs to life.

    Nothing in Process Monitor gave any clues as to why IE would suddenly hang during launch, then resume the instant Word exited.

    Resetting IE to factory defaults made no difference, nor did repairing Office (that never helps – Office 2007 is fundamentally broken, I'm hoping 2010 is far less flaky). However, a sweeping system restore did change what was at the top of the stack during the hang -- WININET.DLL!CreateUrlCacheEntryA (instead of ntkrnlpa.exe!NtBuildNumber / ntkrnlpa.exe!MmIsDriverVerying). Safari was on this PC too – it would actually launch under the same circumstances, but it was completely incapable of opening any web pages until Word was closed. The reason? It turned out that it, too, had a thread stuck in WININET.DLL!CreateUrlCacheEntryA.

    The images copied into the Word document as HTML were actually causing Word to reach out onto the network, and seemingly do nothing: the document still opened perfectly on a machine in quarantine mode. Yet, TCPView showed Wordconv (I still have Office 2003 ;-) connecting to various servers, so it was definitely doing something, but I don't know what.

    And for whatever reason, this causes a Word thread to lock the browser cache open, preventing any other process from using it (IE sits on WaitForSingleObject).

    Taking apart a .docx file and finding it full of random pieces of JavaScript mistakenly copied from Internet Explorer was a real WTF moment.



  • So, not only do we have to be careful about copying FROM Word, but we also need to be careful about copying TO Word?



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    Word


    Well, that's been an infinite source of various WTFs over the years, given MS's propensity to integrate everything and the kitchen sink into it. "Fundamentally broken program remains fundamentally broken, film at 11."



  • @Shinhan said:

    So, not only do we have to be careful about copying FROM Word, but we also need to be careful about copying TO Word from IE?

    FTFY.



  • @piskvorr said:

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    Word


    Well, that's been an infinite source of various WTFs over the years, given MS's propensity to integrate everything and the kitchen sink into it. "Fundamentally broken program remains fundamentally broken, film at 11."

    I have mixed feelings on Word.

    What depresses me is the price Microsoft charge for it given that it's remained fundamentally unchanged since 1993 (ribbon notwithstanding). OK, that's a little unfair, but when you consider that people today aren't aware of, let alone trained to use the managed multilevel bullets and numbering, managed TOCs, master documents, stylesheets, revision control and many other features that were all present and correct in Word 6, I struggle to understand what we're paying for. Word 6 had macros and it had the snazzy customisable tool palettes too.

    My main gripe with Word is simply that I can't have multilevel numbering like this:

    1. This paragraph has numbered sub-paragraphs
      1. Step 1
      2. Step 2
    2. This paragraph has bulleted sub-paragraphs
      • Bullet 1
      • Bullet 2

    Word isn't perfect, but it's not terrible. It's not simple, but it's also not a toy. Excel bothers me more because it really is retarded. Enough MDI already! And Excel 2010 still threads a single undo history across your open documents. Seriously WTF? What on earth is anyone doing in VBA to make that still be necessary? Enough already.



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    My main gripe with Word is simply that I can't have multilevel numbering like this:

    1. This paragraph has numbered sub-paragraphs
      1. Step 1
      2. Step 2
    2. This paragraph has bulleted sub-paragraphs
      • Bullet 1
      • Bullet 2
    I don't know which Word you're using, but I can do that just fine.
    I can mix 'n match between lists and even within lists. And even between sub-lists within lists. Bullets, numbers, Roman numerals and even customized bullet points.


  • @Shondoit said:

    I don't know which Word you're using, but I can do that just fine.
    How? I tried it in Word 2010, and while I managed to reproduce this exact example, trying to add a 3rd numbered paragraph greeted me with it being number 2 again.



  • Okay, I'll give you that one. Switching between list styles is difficult.
    However, if you write the list and all sub-lists first and style afterwards, it still works, i.e. the numbering continues like it should.



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    Excel bothers me more because it really is retarded. Enough MDI already! And Excel 2010 still threads a single undo history across your open documents. Seriously WTF? What on earth is anyone doing in VBA to make that still be necessary? Enough already.

    Agreed. At work we have "Spreadsheet City" (AKA, everything is a spreadsheet, even things which are supposed to be databases). Open one file, make some modifications, open another file, close the second file and your first file and its changes are gone, despite being a completely different tab on the taskbar and so giving you a false sense its another instance of excel. I hate it when applications do that, but I've only noticed it with excel.  I've actually uninstalled Office now and replaced it with Open Office. I know it has its own WTFs, but at least I can say "Hey, it's free, what do you expect?" instead of "I can't believe this crap cost me more than my yearly food budget". 

     

     



  • Excel has an option to disable the phoney taskbar buttons, which I turned on. I'm used to clicking the taskbar button of the active window to minimise it, and this doesn't work when there's only one window. It's easier to turn all that rubbish off, since it makes no difference to whether I can have separate documents on separate monitors, which I often want to do. This means multiple Excel instances that tread on each other's recent file list. Also, Sage Excel Integrated Reporting craps itself and dies if you open two instances of Excel and needs manually re-activating. I boggle at anyone who thinks Excel is a good program. (Apparently it's not unusual to use phoney taskbar buttons, at least in Delphi, but they do normally have a one-to-one relationship with a real window. There's nowt so overcomplified as Winders.)

    Adobe Reader also had or has the same behaviour, but I've long since replaced it with Foxit Reader, which has a tab bar.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    I boggle at anyone who thinks Excel is a good program.

    Because they don't do the same crazy shit that you do?



  • @boomzilla said:

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:
    I boggle at anyone who thinks Excel is a good program.

    Because they don't do the same crazy shit that you do?

    You mean the sheer audacity of having two displays on the same computer?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    @boomzilla said:
    @Daniel Beardsmore said:
    I boggle at anyone who thinks Excel is a good program.

    Because they don't do the same crazy shit that you do?

    You mean the sheer audacity of having two displays on the same computer?

    Perhaps. Honestly, I haven't been a heavy user of Excel for some time, although back when I was, it was on machines with a single display. Nevertheless, I boggle at people who boggle like that.

    TRWTF is probably how windows handles multiple monitors. Such as the apparent inability to put a taskbar on each monitor. I guess insufficient usability testing was done on that account, eh?



  • @boomzilla said:

    TRWTF is probably how windows handles multiple monitors. Such as the apparent inability to put a taskbar on each monitor. I guess insufficient usability testing was done on that account, eh?

    I use UltraMon™ for that.

    I've only used a dual display Mac briefly (a PowerBook 160 connected to an external display) but what I find more puzzling is how can anyone deal with the menu bar being on the wrong display to the active window? Or if it's two screens away? That seems more egregious to me than switching off the tedious taskbar grouping in Windows 7 so that you can go back to having taskbar buttons on the same monitor as the windows themselves. (My beef with grouping is that you can't simply aim for a button, it's a complex and slow curve through the button and finally the window preview button. But that will have to wait until I have time to reinstall my work PC.)


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    @boomzilla said:

    TRWTF is probably how windows handles multiple monitors. Such as the apparent inability to put a taskbar on each monitor. I guess insufficient usability testing was done on that account, eh?

    I use UltraMon™ for that.

    Yeah, I'm aware that there are 3rd party solutions. I don't use Windows enough to justify that, however.

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    I've only used a dual display Mac briefly (a PowerBook 160 connected to an external display) but what I find more puzzling is how can anyone deal with the menu bar being on the wrong display to the active window? Or if it's two screens away?

    Yikes...does it really do that? I dislike having the menubar disassociated from the window to begin with.

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    That seems more egregious to me than switching off the tedious taskbar grouping in Windows 7 so that you can go back to having taskbar buttons on the same monitor as the windows themselves.

    I actually like having all my windows show up on each taskbar. That way it's easy to raise a window...I may just want to look at it.



  • @boomzilla said:

    I actually like having all my windows show up on each taskbar. That way it's easy to raise a window...I may just want to look at it.

    The down side to that is increased taskbar clutter – my taskbar clutter is approximately halved by moving many buttons to another taskbar. However, I still can't find half the bleeding buttons, so ultimately I am still Doing it Wrong™.

    Maybe Star Trek gets it right – one program per monitor until all you can see is monitors. It would be like Mr Data's quarters.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    The down side to that is increased taskbar clutter – my taskbar clutter is approximately halved by moving many buttons to another taskbar. However, I still can't find half the bleeding buttons, so ultimately I am still Doing it Wrong™.

    Vertical taskbars are great for lots of open windows. And given the dimensions of today's monitors, I'm usually happier to give up a bit of horizontal than vertical space.



  • Wait... you people actually LEFTCLICK the taskbar buttons?

    Rightclicking sometimes is useful... but this?

    boggles and alt-tabs away



  • @bannedfromcoding said:

    Wait... you people actually LEFTCLICK the taskbar buttons?
    Rightclicking sometimes is useful... but this?
    *boggles and alt-tabs away*
    Worse. Some people here actually left-click the thumbnails in the alt-tab popup1.

    1It's useful every other blue moon.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @bannedfromcoding said:

    Wait... you people actually LEFTCLICK the taskbar buttons?

    Rightclicking sometimes is useful... but this?

    boggles and alt-tabs away

    You'd be amazed at the things I LEFT CLICK. Anyways, it's quicker and easier than tabbing through lots of different stuff quite often, especially if I've already got a hand on the mouse.



  • I frequently middle click windows because that's often the only button which will bring them to front and focus them but cause no other side effects (like changing the current selection or opening popup menus). This is especially useful for Explorer windows (for the file system, not the internet browser).



  • @boomzilla said:

    You'd be amazed at the things I LEFT CLICK. Anyways, it's quicker and easier than tabbing through lots of different stuff quite often, especially if I've already got a hand on the mouse.
    I just hold my side button and roll the wheel (but then again, I set that combination to do Alt+Tab for me).



  • @boomzilla said:

    @bannedfromcoding said:
    Wait... you people actually LEFTCLICK the taskbar buttons?

    Rightclicking sometimes is useful... but this?

    boggles and alt-tabs away

    You'd be amazed at the things I LEFT CLICK. Anyways, it's quicker and easier than tabbing through lots of different stuff quite often, especially if I've already got a hand on the mouse.

    Well, that's the thing -- the new taskbar is a bit of a here. I have the average number of hands. I need two to type, and one for the mouse. Moving from keyboard to mouse is an expensive operation (I don't have solid state hands yet), and the new taskbar requires various immemorable combinations of ctrl, alt, shift, left and right click to do simple things like close all items in a group and open program elevated.

    Why can't I do this?

    I believe strongly that, within reason, every operation on a computer should be achievable with both the keyboard and mouse in isolation. That's why I love right-drag in Explorer and Outlook -- I don't have to reach for ctrl/shift to determine the outcome of the operation. I also like not having to reach for the mouse when I can do something entirely from the keyboard.

    Then there's intelligent mouse operation. Anyone here familiar with RISC OS? The third mouse button, "Adjust", worked the same way: adjust-drag moved a window without raising it (cmd-drag on a Mac), Adjust-click on a scroll bar button scrolls the opposite way to the button. Adjust-close a filer window to close it and open the parent window (something like cmd-option-shift-up on a Mac). Adjust-click files to add or remove them from the selection, which in compliant Windows applications can be done entirely with the keyboard using ctrl-arrows/ctrl-space in any multi-select list). (Middle mouse was menu: there were no menu bars: if you wanted a menu, you used the middle "Menu" mouse button and the menu was a combination of a menu bar and a context menu. Remarkable GUI, appears to have had zero influence on anything else made to this day. Quite tragic.)

    </ramble for="today">



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    and open program elevated.

    Why can't I do this?

    Not that it addresses your question, but if you have to elevate a program often enough that you need a taskbar button for it, you're doing something wrong. Especially if it's Paint.



  • There's probably a valid scientific research project in discovering what's keeping me from being locked away.


  • Garbage Person

    @blakeyrat said:

    Not that it addresses your question, but if you have to elevate a program often enough that you need a taskbar button for it, you're doing something wrong. Especially if it's Paint.
    I could do for an elevated command prompt button. And elevated notepad (since the only time I ever use notepad is dicking with system files)



  • @Weng said:

    I could do for an elevated command prompt button....

    Me too, especially considering that Microsoft still haven't got a clue what sudo is. But psst Blakey doesn't believe in the command prompt ;-)

    @Weng said:

    ... And elevated notepad (since the only time I ever use notepad is dicking with system files)

    There are two alternatives here: a) verb elevation:

    Possibly you mark verbs as either Elevate Optional, or Elevate Always. I'm also annoyed that instead of HKCU\Software\Classes support to the verb editor, they ripped it out. Thank fuck for Registry Editor.

    Or b) elevation in Save dialogs.

    I'm also annoyed that instead of moving more control panels into their own CPL files (e.g. Network Connections), Microsoft have moved more of them the wrong way, into Explorer, which still doesn't permit a second, elevated instance, for when the current user isn't an administrator in the first place. (Obviously I don't want to preserve the gruesome horror that is CPL files with their miniature, cramped little dialog boxes, but rather we need a control panel host equivalent of MMC that can run isolated instances. Maybe by Windows 9.)


  • Garbage Person

     You know, I was trained as a UI/usability engineer and I do enjoy it. Maybe it's time to refocus my career a bit. The Windows team could certainly use more eyes.



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    Why can't I do this?

    Right-click the button on the task bar, then right-click the program name, then select run as administrator.

    @Weng said:

    I could do for an elevated command prompt button. And elevated notepad (since the only time I ever use notepad is dicking with system files)

    Open the start menu, right-click the command prompt link in your accessories, pin it to the taskbar. Then right-click the new task bar button, right-click the command prompt item, open its properties, click advanced on the shortcut tab, check run as administrator, confirm everything.

     



  • @fatbull said:

    Right-click the button on the task bar, then right-click the program name, then select run as administrator.

    I always thought that being able to open a context menu on another menu was exceptionally stupid. Useful, but stupid. It's also used so rarely that it's never obvious where you can use it. I mostly use it to sort the start menu in alphabetical order, since Microsoft are too lame to automatically sort it (maybe Vista fixed that).

    Mouse operations should all be visually discoverable. However, I shall bear that tip in mind if I hadn't already discovered and promptly forgotten it :)


  • Garbage Person

    @fatbull said:

    Right-click the button on the task bar, then right-click the program name, then select run as administrator.

    @Weng said:

    I could do for an elevated command prompt button. And elevated notepad (since the only time I ever use notepad is dicking with system files)

    Open the start menu, right-click the command prompt link in your accessories, pin it to the taskbar. Then right-click the new task bar button, right-click the command prompt item, open its properties, click advanced on the shortcut tab, check run as administrator, confirm everything.

    I'm well aware of this. However, it's an extra click - and a rather arguable design point.

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