HTML Tab

This is where you will view HTML copied from web pages, or raw HTML tags copied from an editor. With data copied from Internet Explorer, the pages in ClipMate should look very similar to the original, complete with images.

ClipMate uses Internet Explorer to render the HTML, but does not require that you use Internet Explorer as your primary browser.

Some applications copy data as a particular "HTML Format" data type. This format is designed for exchanging portions of HTML pages, with all formatting intact, except for the content of graphics. Not all applications support this format currently, but we expect it to become more popular, as Microsoft has documented it as a public data exchange format.

If you copy some textual data from a web page, ClipMate will capture the specific "HTML Format" data type, and display it in the HTML tab. It will look remarkably like the original text, with the appropriate fonts, tables, and colors. Hypertext Links are clickable, and will launch the target URL in your default browser.

When an application supports the complete "HTML Format" specification, it supplies the URL of the page that the data was copied from. This is particularly useful if you copy data from Internet Explorer. If you see a valid URL in the "Source URL" field, then the Revisit button will launch your web browser to go back to that page. This only works, of course, if the page is still on the server, and if you are connected. Note that not all applications will provide a meaningful Source URL. News articles, for example, are not usually launchable.

•	Use Pictures From Browser Cache If enabled, ClipMate will attempt to insert pictures from your browser cache (IE Only), and show them in the rendered HTML. Note: Due to security changes in Vista and IE7, ClipMate cannot display browser cache images on Vista.

•	Delete Scripts If enabled, any scripts found in the HTML stream will be deleted. This can affect the display of some pages that use scripts to determine various elements of the page layout, but it removes the possibility of being attacked by a malicious script.

•	Use All HTML Determines whether to use all of the HTML in the clip, or to truncate it according to "startfragment/endfragment" tags in the header. Usually, you can leave it on.

FireFox 1.5 and later fully support the HTML Format data type, complete with Source URL.

Prior to version 7, Netscape did not support the HTML Format data type. So ClipMate relied on Dynamic Data Exchange to converse with Netscape and obtain the "Source URL" that way. Netscape 7 DOES support the HTML Format data type. Unfortunately, they did not include the optional "Source URL" data, which is what allows ClipMate to determine the URL that the clip came from. So it's useless for determining the URL. Even more unfortunate, they have apparently gutted the DDE interface, so that we cannot even use the backup method (DDE conversation using topic: WWW_GetWindowInfo) of determining the URL. So although data from Netscape 7 will have the HTML Format data, and will look nice in ClipMate, there is no way to determine the Source URL.

Opera does not support the HTML Format data type. Reports vary on whether DDE works with Opera any more. ClipMate will try to use DDE, if enabled in Config | User Preferences | Advanced.

When you copy HTML to the clipboard, only the HTML itself is present on the clipboard. Any Images are referenced by <IMG> tags, and are not actually on the clipboard. When you paste data containing <IMG> tags, the application that you paste into will re-download the images from the original site, or it may retrieve the images from your browser cache.

ClipMate6 can also retrieve images from your (IE) browser cache. So when you view HTML in ClipMate, you will often be able to view the original images, if they are still in the cache.

Web page developers will appreciate the ability to view plain text in the HTML tab, where it is interpreted as HTML. Text without tags appears as regular text. But any tags are interpreted by Internet Explorer. For example, this text: <H1> Heading 1 </H1> would display as "heading 1" style, in the HTML viewer.

When TEXT is displayed in this tab, the caption on the tag changes to indicate "TEXT as HTML", so that you know that it is interpreting TEXT as HTML, rather than displaying the actual HTML format.

The HTML tab has a unique popup menu that is provided by Internet Explorer directly. It is the same menu that you get if you right-click inside Internet Explorer itself. Interesting items here are View Source, which will launch Notepad to show you the text representation of the HTML, and the Print feature. Again, the printing is performed by Internet Explorer, not ClipMate, so it will behave a bit differently than ClipMate printing.