Pasting non-text data into browser-based apps

Question

Imagine I want a user to be able to copy-paste a selection of pixels from MSPaint into a browser-based app. Is this possible using JavaScript in any current browsers? Will it become possible in HTML5? If not, is it feasible using something like Flex/Silverlight, or is it simply not possible at this time, and you'd have to save a file and manually upload it?

update: sounds like HTML5 should allow it, but that's a way in the future to be genuinely useful. Some suggestions of Java applets and Flash are mentioned, probably Flash would be preferable since parts of the web-client would probably use Flex anyway... I'd rather not have requirement for Java and Flash in my site.

Answer 1

There's a very thorough examination of this prior question: Wysiwyg with image copy/paste. It discusses possibly coming behavior in HTML5, as well as Flash and Java applet solutions that interact with the clipboard, and which you can then tie into JavaScript.

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Questioner asked about Zeroclipboard's applicability. So, look at the file ZeroClipboard10.as and you'll see the click handler supports two data formats:

private function clickHandler(event:Event):void {
    // user click copies text to clipboard
    // as of flash player 10, this MUST happen from an in-movie flash click event
    Clipboard.generalClipboard.clear();
    Clipboard.generalClipboard.setData(ClipboardFormats.TEXT_FORMAT, clipText);
    Clipboard.generalClipboard.setData(ClipboardFormats.HTML_FORMAT, clipText);
    ExternalInterface.call( 'ZeroClipboard.dispatch', id, 'complete', clipText );
}

The reference for ActionScript's ClipboardFormats constant indicates one of the formats is a BITMAP_FORMAT. So I think that's a pretty good start.