Line breaks not copy/pasting from one site to another
Sometime around the installation of 69.0 on my machine this month, the following weird problem has come up:
I will often compose text in a gmail draft message (gmail's autosave protects me from losing my work). Then when finished and proofed, I'll copy/paste the text into another buffer in my browser.
This worked straightforward as expected for more than a decade. But since 69.0, sometimes, in some sites (LinkedIn messaging is one example), the line breaks between paragraphs (entered, as would be expected, by pressing the enter key twice) are missing - there's only one line break, not two, after a paragraph.
Oddly, if I fix the line spacing in the non-gmail site, copy the result, then paste to gmail, anything I copy from that (what I've pasted back to gmail) then copy/pastes fine in the non-gmail site.
I've looked into this being a gmail problem, but I suspect that since the only thing that has changed for me in the past 10 days is a new FF version, it's a FF problem and not gmail.
This incidentally happens to me on two different computers - one is Windows 7, the other Windows 10.
All Replies (9)
Hi firefoxacct.10.dggeorge, I'm not aware of a new change related to line breaks, but let me mention an older one:
There was a change in Firefox 60 that made Firefox more like other browsers, which conflicts with how the editors on some sites treat Firefox specially. You could try the following change to see whether it affects LinkedIn:
(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button promising to be careful or accepting the risk.
(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste newline and pause while the list is filtered
(3) Double-click the editor.use_div_for_default_newlines preference to switch the value from true to false (was false in Firefox 57-59)
Any difference on either side (Gmail or LinkedIn)?
jscher2000 said
Hi firefoxacct.10.dggeorge, I'm not aware of a new change related to line breaks, but let me mention an older one: There was a change in Firefox 60 that made Firefox more like other browsers, which conflicts with how the editors on some sites treat Firefox specially. You could try the following change to see whether it affects LinkedIn: (1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button promising to be careful or accepting the risk. (2) In the search box above the list, type or paste newline and pause while the list is filtered (3) Double-click the editor.use_div_for_default_newlines preference to switch the value from true to false (was false in Firefox 57-59) Any difference on either side (Gmail or LinkedIn)?
Thanks. This was a great guess. Unfortunately, this didn't solve the problem. the preference you mentioned was true when I entered about:config, I switched it to false, but doing so didn't fix things. Best I can tell, it didn't change anything.
Did you check the HTML code that you get when pasting the text assuming that this is a rich text editor (WYSIWYG)?
cor-el said
Did you check the HTML code that you get when pasting the text assuming that this is a rich text editor (WYSIWYG)?
I haven't. Is there generated html code simply when pasting into a buffer (versus "posting" or sending the text)? If so, how would I check it?
I will say, other than the FF version, nothing here has changed. "Expected" behavior was the norm for my dozen years with FF and gmail. It's only been this month that the unexpected behavior started.
Some websites may have changed from a plain text editor to a rich text editor that accepts HTML formatting code like <P> tags and <DIV> tags as block element and <SPAN> tags for inline text and tags to style the text (bold: <B>; italic: <I>; underline: <U>). A Rich text editor usually has a tab to switch to plain text mode to inspect the HTML code.
I don't know if this is related, but I just posted a new question about unwanted line breaks: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1268823
To summarize, now in composing in gmail - only in Firefox - pressing "enter" generates a <br> tag, but after entering a numbered or bulleted list, pressing "enter" generates a <p> tag.
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firefoxacct.10.dggeorge said
To summarize, now in composing in gmail - only in Firefox - pressing "enter" generates a<br>tag, but after entering a numbered or bulleted list, pressing "enter" generates a<p>tag.
You could undo the change to the editor.use_div_for_default_newlines preference from earlier in this thread and see whether that resolves the Gmail issue.
jscher2000 said
firefoxacct.10.dggeorge saidTo summarize, now in composing in gmail - only in Firefox - pressing "enter" generates a<br>tag, but after entering a numbered or bulleted list, pressing "enter" generates a<p>tag.You could undo the change to the editor.use_div_for_default_newlines preference from earlier in this thread and see whether that resolves the Gmail issue.
I appreciate your re-reminding me of this.
The suggestion fixed a different problem I posted in a later thread (gmail going to double-line-spacing after a numbered or bullet list).
But I tried for this problem, and this suggestion did not fix this problem.
gamma45 said
But I tried for this problem, and this suggestion did not fix this problem.
Yes, I remember. This problem is unsolved. (I don't want to experiment with my personal LinkedIn account.)