Offscreen Text for Copy & Paste
The relationship between HTML and CSS is special: mixing content via HTML with presentation from CSS to make an awesome presentation. Sometimes, however, you need to employ CSS tricks solely to enhance functionality. This could be one of those cases.
When browsing through the Firefox DevTools console code, I noticed a really clever technique for hiding text on screen but making sure it's present during a copy + paste. Here's the technique:
<p>Jenny don't change your number <span class="copy-only">8675309</span></p>
.copy-only {
display: block;
position: absolute;
left: -9999999px;
top: -9999999px;
}
With the CSS above, the screen displays "Jenny don't change your number" while copying that line would result in "Jenny don't change your number 8675309".
When you plant the text offscreen via CSS, it's still copied to the clipboard when the user does a copy operation. You're essentially picking and choosing what gets copied, which can be very valuable if you expect users to copy your content.
![CSS Animations Between Media Queries]()
CSS animations are right up there with sliced bread. CSS animations are efficient because they can be hardware accelerated, they require no JavaScript overhead, and they are composed of very little CSS code. Quite often we add CSS transforms to elements via CSS during...
![Write Better JavaScript with Promises]()
You've probably heard the talk around the water cooler about how promises are the future. All of the cool kids are using them, but you don't see what makes them so special. Can't you just use a callback? What's the big deal? In this article, we'll...
![CSS Gradients]()
With CSS border-radius, I showed you how CSS can bridge the gap between design and development by adding rounded corners to elements. CSS gradients are another step in that direction. Now that CSS gradients are supported in Internet Explorer 8+, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome...
![Implement jQuery’s hover() Method in MooTools]()
jQuery offers a quick event shortcut method called hover that accepts two functions that represent mouseover and mouseout actions. Here's how to implement that for MooTools Elements.
The MooTools JavaScript
We implement hover() which accepts to functions; one will be called on mouseenter and the other...
Very nice, gotta love those little CSS tweaks.
Small caveat, only works if the user double-clicks on line to select, won’t if it’s a “click-hold on first letter and drag cursor” kind of copy
Does it work in all browsers? It’s very easy to use and simple, but I’m concerned that it could be too simple to work in every browser.
These simple and small tweaks help a long way in designing. Thanks a lot for sharing :)