Javascript: Hijack Copy?

Question

I was just reading the Times online and I wanted to copy a bit of text from the article and IM it to a friend, but I noticed when I did so, it automatically appended the link back to the article in what I had copied.

This is not a feature of my IM client, so I assume this happened because of some javascript on Times website.

How would I accomplish this if I wanted to implement it on my site? Basically, I would have to hijack the copy operation and append the URL of the article to the end of the copied content, right? Thoughts?

Here's the article I was reading, for reference: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1914857,00.html

Answer 1

What browser are you using (and what version)?

In some newer browsers, the user is either asked if a website can access the clipboard, or its simply not allowed. In other browsers (IE 6, for example), it is allowed, and websites can easily read from and write to your copy clipboard.

Here is the code (IE only)

clipboardData.setData("Text", "I just put this in the clipboard using JavaScript");

Answer 2

It's a breeze with jQuery (which your referenced site is using):

$("body").bind('copy', function(e) {
    // The user is copying something
});

You can use the jQuery Search & Share Plugin which does this exact thing whenever somebody copies more than 40 chars from your site: http://www.latentmotion.com/search-and-share/

The site that you referenced is apparently using a service called Tynt Insight to accomplish this though.

Answer 3

They are using the free service Tynt. If you want to accomplish the same thing, just use the same service.