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problem pasting a screenshot into mail

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If I paste a screen shot into a mail with firefox 15 on windows XP using screenhunter or other software, the image appears ok when composing, but appears as img src="data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAA (snip) when viewed.

This occurs on both yahoo and gmail, and both chrome and IE do not exhibit the problem (they use a different header).

If I paste a screen shot into a mail with firefox 15 on windows XP using screenhunter or other software, the image appears ok when composing, but appears as img src="data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAA (snip) when viewed. This occurs on both yahoo and gmail, and both chrome and IE do not exhibit the problem (they use a different header).

All Replies (11)

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Can you add the image as an attachment? That might be the answer. Some email clients block remote images.

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Firefox IS the email client and yes, it is having problems. When I paste into Firefox it fails. When I use IE or Chrome with the same html mail sites (yahoo and gmail) they work fine. The problem is how firefox is deciding to encode the image into the mail (as I pasted above). It chooses a method that even it cannot decode. If you give me an email address, I can send you two mails through yahoo. One done with Firefox, and one with Chrome. You can open them both with Firefox. The one from firefox will not display, and the one from chrome will display just fine.

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Actually, if you have yahoo or hotmail or gmail you can do this for yourself. Copy an image to the clipboard and paste into firefox. It will look fine at this point. Mail it to yourself and it will not display. Do the same with IE or Chrome and it will work fine.

Okulungisiwe ngu easily_confused

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Is this the right forum to report this issue? Anyone interested?

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Firefox isn't an email client. Your webmail portal or website is the "client" program.

What are you using to "take" that screenshot? Look for a setting to save the screenshot as something like PNG or JPG, rather than data: - Base64 "image".

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In case this is a recent Firefox regression, I'm willing to be a guinea pig for this experiment.

If you can send me a screenshot from ScreenHunter using Firefox 15 and then using either Chrome or IE to mozsupport@gmail.com (I'm aware of spam, this was made for these cases), I'll test it against a older version of Firefox and let you know the results.

Can you also take a screenshot using the PrintScreen key, paste it into either Gmail or Yahoo and email it to me (once w/ Fx 15 & once w/ Chrome) for comparison? Thanks.

I wouldn't be surprised if this was a regression with all these untested patches flying around.

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I sent you images pasted in-line using firefox and chrome through gmail. They were screen captures captured to the clipboard using "screen capture". I don't want to uninstall it to get normal PrtScr functionality, so I didn't do that part. Previously I have tried both screenhunter, and normal captures through both yahoo and gmail and seen the same results. It would be trivial for you to just do a printscreen and test this. If it works for you then I need to figure out what ielse may be different. A co-worker is experiencing the same thing, BTW. I have not tried older versions.

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@Noah_SUMO Did you receive the emails? Did they behave as I said they would? Is this a bug or something weird at my end? Sure would like to use firefox with my work's gmail account, but I need inline images to work. Should I file this as a bug somewhere?

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I'm still hoping someone can help me with this issue. I've sent examples, described details, and it's all gone into a black hole. Maybe there will be new release and it will magically go away.

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I got them all. And am seeing the same results as you. I went back all the way to Firefox 11 and the inline images still wouldn't display. I'm going to see if I can go back further to see if they ever do show up as inline images in the email.

From what I've been reading though webmail sites have been blocking this on purpose. Because in the past, spam emails would embed an invisible inline image (that wasn't added as a attachment) and by downloading that image the spammer would know you were a active email account and spam you harder.

Anyway, I've been testing with Gmail & Yahoo mail and can't get embedded images to appear. I also tested with IE9 and the images that were sent w/ Firefox only appeared as small generic picture icons. I tried then to paste a screenshot into both Yahoo's & Gmail's compose window using IE9 and the right-click menu had "Paste" greyed out. I have no idea why unless IE doesn't let you paste photos from the clipboard while in InPrivate browsing mode.

jscher2000 offers his analysis here:
http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/930024

It looks like Chrome handles this differently. From the emails you sent me before, it looks like Chrome takes any image pasted into the typing area and auto converts it to a attachment. Firefox does not do this. This makes sense since Chrome wants Gmail users to have the best care-free experience possible w/ automatic convenient features not found using other browsers.

I'll see if I can get Chrome and confirm.


Update:

Chrome copies images from the clipboard differently than Firefox and makes them work:
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/pasting-images-into-messages-just-got.html

So easily_confused, you're right. Firefox is pasting the images as data:image where Chrome is structuring the image data differently. I'm not sure what the right term is here but maybe it's setting a different "content-type" so that Gmail can recognize it's a image.

Chrome does have this better image pasting and I think these bugs were the fix:
Issue 75237: Support image paste in Chrome
Issue 86085: HTML image paste results in a blank image

Looks like Gmail is including this feature for non-Chrome users since 10/5/12.

Insert images inline in Gmail:
https://plus.google.com/+Gmail/posts/g3yU3KjPTUs

Before this you had to install the "Inserting images" lab from Gmail Labs:
http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=148408

Other confusing sightings of this issue:

Another guide on how to paste images inline in Gmail (seems more accurate):
http://email.about.com/od/gmailtips/qt/et_inline_image.htm

This is a complicated issue to say the least. Some browsers are allowing it, some aren't. Some webmails are allowing it, some aren't.

Okulungisiwe ngu NoahSUMO

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Thanks for looking into this. It surprises me that it is such a complex issue. I guess I'm stuck with chrome if I want inline images to work until firefox adds them as attachments.

Thanks again.