programming and human factors
by Jeff Atwood
In this era of 3ghz processors, 1gb memory, and 500gb hard drives, why is the Windows clipboard only capable of holding a single item? Sure, you have fancy multi-level undo and redo in applications like Microsoft Word and Visual Studio. Did you know that the humble Windows textbox supports a surprisingly deep undo/redo queue via the CTRL+Z (undo) and CTRL+Y (redo) keys?
But not the clipboard. It holds exactly one item. Copy another item to the clipboard and your previous clipboard item is irrevocably lost.
The clipboard is a model of simplicity. And that's admirable. But I think it's too simple. Adding a basic FIFO queue of clipboard items wouldn't affect typical usage -- but it would provide much richer functionality for intermediate and advanced users. Here's one such clipboard utility that I use, clcl. This lightweight utility launches when I press the ALT+C key, and presents a straightforward menu of recent clipboard items:
Of course, CTRL+C and CTRL+V still work as you would expect. I can't even tell you how many times I've been editing code in Visual Studio and accidentally overwritten the code I copied to the clipboard. Now I don't have to worry; I can just press ALT+C and then use the arrow keys or the number to select the clipboard item I want to paste. The clipboard is a heck of a lot more useful to me when I don't have to constantly worry about losing the one item on it. Clcl even persists the clipboard items to disk so they survive a reboot.
I liked clcl's simplicity, but there are dozens of similar clipboard utilities. To me, that's is a sign that better clipboard functionality really should be built into the operating system. Unfortunately, I can't find any reference to clipboard improvements in Vista. It'd be a darn shame if we're stuck with the archaic single item clipboard for another five years.
At the same time, Outlook and other Office applications that pop up that annoying clipboard list on the right half of my screen can defnitely degrade my user experience when I am only interrested in working with a single clipboard item at a time. I don't really care that in the past day I have added 100 things to the clipboard. I just want the last one. There needs to be a better solution than either keeping track of everything or just one item. The solution you give of being able to show the entire list at my command is better than automatically showing it without me asking for it.
matt on October 31, 2005 1:35 AMI see that you didn't mention visual studio's built in clipboard functionality. Try CTRL+SHIFT+V. Make sure to keep holding down teh CTRL+SHIFT and keep hitting the V. It will cycle through your clipboard.
I would love to see Windows clipboard work like this.
john on October 31, 2005 1:43 AMAt the same time, Outlook and other Office applications that pop up that annoying clipboard list on the right half of my screen
I totally agree. Office and VS.NET (thanks for the reminder, john) have app-level "fixes" for the clipboard. But what we need is an OS-level fix!
That's why I prefer a third party utility that offers clipboard history rather than relying on a particular application's implementation.
How do LINUX, OSX, etc handle the clipboard? Do they offer a clipboard stack of any kind?
Jeff Atwood on October 31, 2005 1:50 AMyes, one OS solution would be best. I would hope that it would have a graphical interface and a power interface using just keystrokes.
john on October 31, 2005 2:05 AMLinux has multiple clipboards, but that's a Bad Thing; X11 has a clipboard, the console has a clipboard and each terminal window has a clipboard. It's confusing.
Joost on October 31, 2005 7:00 AMLooks like OSX has the same brain-damaged "one item in the clipboard at a time" limitation:
Jeff Atwood on October 31, 2005 7:56 AMAlso, someone recently recommended clipx:
I just tried it and it's just as lightweight as CLCL and arguably even better. Worth looking at!
To be honest, I'm so used to having only one item in the clipboard at once, I find that MS Office clipboard confusing!
Peter Bridger on November 1, 2005 6:51 AMYou'd want a LIFO for this, not a FIFO, wouldn't you? It would then behave rather like web browsing with forward and back {buttons, commands}.
hgs on November 1, 2005 7:10 AMI'm so used to having only one item in the clipboard at once, I find that MS Office clipboard confusing!
I think that's because it's an application specific behavior for something that should be system general.
You'd want a LIFO for this, not a FIFO, wouldn't you?
Yes, you're absolutely right; I realized that afer I posted :P
Jeff Atwood on November 3, 2005 1:55 AMWhat I like most in Jeff Atwood's blog is that very often the guy writes about something and I think 'Yeah! Sure. I totally agree." but somehow I never thought of writing about that topic ! [...]
Serge Wautier on November 6, 2005 6:02 AMI like multiple items in a clipboard at the OS level but the default action for a (Ctrl+V) should be to paste the last item. Should only show the list with another key combination.
Office clipboard is optional(but ON by default I believe) and I always turn it off.
I'm also perplexed why a multi-level clipboard has not yet become an integral part of modern operating systems. I mean, the ability to have direct access to any N items put into the clipboard is such a powerful one. Why aren't we able to to put anything in clipboard (a snippet of an email, code or a web-site quote, whatever) and have an option of jumping to any other task and using clipboard again without the fear of losing data from the clipboard and inherent pressure to stay one one task while using the clipboard for it.
Once I had a clipboard mishap and ended up losing a huge chunk of a carefully written email: I had copied the text at least once into the clipboard but alas FireFox crashed (without persisting form data) and at that point I used clipboard for something else as well, thus losing the email text altogether.
After this mishap I've had just the right tool running within 5 (five) minutes - CLCL for Windows. And I've never looked back. I'm sure it accelerates me in my daily job as a software developer some 5%.
After I switched to Mac a couple of weeks back, I felt the need for a similar tool and I've found it in ClipMenu. It's even better than CLCL since it has snippets that can be pasted via another shortcut.
I strongly recommend to anyone to try these tools out, depending on your OS.
Cheers!
Shonzilla
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