iPhone clipboard tricks. •

It looks like this is getting some traffic so let’s summarize what I’ve learned about using the iPhone clipboard, to start.

Interface for clipboard works like so:

• tap quickly to place cursor
• tap and hold for a moment (until loupe) to place cursor and bring up “select/select all/paste” bubble (which doesn’t interfere with typing)
• double-tap and hold on a word to select it directly with selection-area handles and the “copy/cut/paste” bubble; drag to select more; you can also type to replace the selected text, per usual
• select chunks of text instantly: normally a two-finger drag scrolls a frame or a text box, but when editing, a two-finger touch-and-hold selects the text between your fingers; move either finger to refine selection area (sorry, no loupe); release fingers for cut/copy/paste menu and regular selection handles
• select one whole paragraph (or the entire contents of a one-line text box) instantly: two-finger tap
• for the web, the selection area jumps from character-selection to paragraph-selection when you cross a paragraph boundary when you’re zoomed in; when zoomed out, it starts with paragraph selection; nice touch
• shake a couple times to undo or redo

All of that’s pretty good but this is a handheld computer — more than once you’re going to be unhappy you can only copy one area at a time — even though that one copy can include all the text, pictures, etc that the iPhone knows how to grab.

So you don’t have a multi-clipboard and you don’t even know if the window view you had last time in Safari will be there when you return. How do you quote from an article you’re reading, and cite it?

1) Use a clipboard manager app that can fill the clipboard with multiple saved items. I use Pasteboard.

2) Copy each bit to a Note. This was my first idea. As well as it works, Notes has to launch each time you switch back to it. If you’re pulling out many pieces, this can take a minute. Hold it! You can do the same by making a new message in the Mail app! which stays in memory from one visit to the next, can be saved or sent like a Note, and even supports styles so you can see emphasis and such. This is the second fastest and best method and one I still use because it lets you edit as you gather clippings.

Read on for other things I tried:

3) Stack URIs and text in the address bar. Believe it or not you can paste a lot of text into the address bar, but it can’t deal with paragraph breaks. So if all you want is a sentence or two, or URIs from several pages, copy the text, tap the iPhone’s status bar at the top, tap the web address, put the cursor at the end of the address, paste. Then select all and copy again. Slice it up when you get to where you want to paste it all.

4) Ah but you want a couple paragraphs. You need a better pasteboard to assemble your selections. Ladies and gentlemen, I offer you a very Web 2.0 solution: “the comment box.” Yes, you can copy as many interesting things from all over one web page into the comment text box as you can think to copy, even format it, before selecting all and copying away. “Ah,” you’re maybe thinking, “the comment box is way down there, and I have no ‘end’ key to take me to the bottom of that crazylong comment thread.” np. Tap the search box or any exposed text box on the web page, then tap the “previous” or “next” buttons above the iPhone keyboard until you reach the comment box. (I recommend against clicking any “leave a comment” links because they may trigger Safari to load the page again.)

5) “Ah,” you’re probably thinking, “sometimes there’s no comment box.” Very true. It can be a little tougher to use, but you can also use any available text box on the page as a pasteboard. (There’s a Safari bug in the way.)

6) “I want to copy multiple multiple-paragraphs and a bunch of other stuff and there are no exposed input boxes and even though Notes works I want something else.” Ah. Maybe what you want is a pasteboard in easy reach inside Safari. If you’re writing on WordPress.com, you can go to http://m.wordpress.com/?action=post, giving you the nice option of saving things in a Draft (or adding links to your list). Here’s another gizmo though.

http://alohaflower.home.mindspring.com/ipasteboard.html

Bookmark that, grab the file and put it somewhere, whatever. I have no idea how to make it write a cookie that keeps what you pasted until you delete it, but that would be nice, huh. It stores what you write or paste into it for about a week, so if you crash or the page auto-refreshes, your stuff will come back. I wish I could reduce the number of taps. It’s, what, 3 more per item than using Notes.

IMPORTANT to remember that no hijacked web pasteboard is persistent, and the online multi-kludge only pretends to be. Safari can (and does) wipe out what you entered in the text box whenever it wants, by refreshing the page next time you return, and cookies have a way of disappearing. So flipping page-to-page-to-page in Safari without saving your clippings somewhere stable is a bad idea.

HOWEVER.

All of this is ridiculous.

And I know exactly what Apple and other mobile OS designers should do here.

EXACTLY.

Right now the interface for the single clipboard is very simple. You select where you want to paste and up pops the “Select/Select All/Paste” bubble.

It would be almost no effort to add one of those little “drop down menu” arrows to the Paste button. If user presses Paste, they get LIFO. If user presses and holds Paste, they get a nice thumbnail menu of the last 8(?) things Copied or Cut. It’s a common interface concept. It’s right there in your “back” button if you’re reading this with a desktop web browser.

(I’ve lost or destroyed the address of the very clever Japanese Palm OS programmer who made the super-awesome clipboard gizmo that’s sort of inspiring this. In that model, Paste always brought up a contextual menu with the last 7 items Copied and there was something else on the menu, too. Might’ve been “clear this menu.” I’m not sure.)

(•) After a few hours reading Javascript docs, I got the pasteboard page to make a cookie and store what’s pasted or typed into it for — how long. A week? A month? A week.

(•) Th’only thing doesn’t work as well as it could so far is it turns out “paste” doesn’t count as a “key” event, so if you paste-and-run with the home button, there’s a chance when you come back that you have to paste again. if. you. still. can.

(•) The “apps” really need to think more about how people will be using them — in combination — not — for instance — how they would work if they were installed on an iPod — that wasn’t also a phone — with modal dialogs.

Notice if you would that Palm is getting high praise from reviewers for the subtlety and effectiveness of its notification system. Were they the only ones who thought they knew what they were doing? The only “software architects,” maybe. But don’t get me started. I just had to muddle through a couple really long threads full of Linux geeks who swore they would get rid of the smooth, useful, “insulting” UI elements of Web OS to expose the raw purity of open source digitalia beneath.

Meanwhile their beloved handheld miracle is too proud to swap applications out of memory — it would rather die — and does.

Is it me, or are all these people trying to make the second coming of pocket computing look like a coincidence?

(•) “Solved” the cookie size limit issue.

(•) Done.

(•) Well you got all the way here might as well http://tr.im/readplanb