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Paste Image Support for IBM iNotes and SmartCloud Notes web

Added by ~Sanjay Bubtumiburakoi | Edited by ~Sigmund Quetwevitchikle on November 15, 2013 | Version 8

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Sometimes users see broken image links when viewing messages received in Notes or iNotes. The ability to paste images from the clipboard works in both Firefox and Chrome in iNotes 9.0 Social Edition and Smart Cloud Notes Web. Safari 6 and IE 10 do not yet support this, but we are hoping they too will offer the needed browser APIs to do this in the future.

Tags: paste information, richtext

Sometimes users see broken image links when viewing messages received in Notes or iNotes.

The ability to paste images from the clipboard works in both Firefox and Chrome in iNotes 9.0 Social Edition and Smart Cloud Notes Web GA8.

Safari 6 and IE 10 do not yet support this, but we are hoping they too will offer the needed browser APIs to do this in the future.

Recent versions of Mozilla Firefox support automatically pasting images from the clipboard into the browser's rich text editor. The image is pasted as a img tag with the href value containing a data URI scheme (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_URI_scheme) -- the base64 encoded value of the image is the data portion of the URI. Google Chrome supports the ability to add an onpaste handler to the Chrome rich text editor, and additional HTML5 APIs to query the contents of the clipboard and retrieve the base64 encoding of an image on the clipboard. This technique is used by IBM iNotes/SC Notes web to insert the pasted image in a manner similar to what is done automatically by Mozilla Firefox.

There are older mail clients (as well as older browsers) that do not support the data URI scheme rendering and so will show a broken image link when viewing the received message. In order to better accommodate these older clients IBM iNotes 9.0 /SC Notes web GA8 converts the img data URI scheme to a MIME part before sending which allows other mail clients to see the image.

In summary there are really two problems being discussed here: data interoperability ( avoiding a broken image link in browsers and Notes clients that do not support rendering the data URI scheme ) and the inability to paste images into the rich text editor from a clipboard. IE8 and above support the data uri scheme for img tags to maintain data interoperability but the IE rich text editor does not currently support pasting of images for security reasons. Note that IE8 has size limitations for it's data uri support. See the Web Browser Support section in the WIki article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_URI_scheme or http://caniuse.com/datauri for more information. Versions prior to iNotes 9.0 and GA8 may appear to support inline image rendering if the receiving browser and Notes client version supports the data URI tag pasting and rendering inline. IBM Notes 8.x and 9.x clients on Windows platforms now default to using an embedded version of Internet Explorer for rendering HTML content, and so should render the data uri scheme if Notes is using IE8 and above. See this Note's tech note for more information http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21268588

Below are a set of tables to help quickly explain the current support. There is more information to explain the table abbreviations listed below.

Paste Image

Which browsers and versions of iNotes support paste image from clipboard into the rich text editor using the data URI scheme?

	IE	FF	Chrome	Safari
9.0, SCNw (current)	No	Yes	Yes	No
8.5.3	No	Yes	No	No

Send Image

To work with older browsers and mail clients a feature was added to convert the inline Data URI image to MIME part.

	8.5.3	9.0	SCNW
iNotes Converts Data URI images into MIME part on Send	No	Yes	Yes

Render Image

Which clients support rendering inline images?

8.5.3

IE, FF, Chrome, Safari

9.0, SCNW

IE, FF, Chrome, Safari

Notes

Render MIME part inline image

Yes

Render Data URI inline image

Yes (*1)(*2)

Yes (*2)

Yes (*2)(*3)

(*1) Domino ACF limits on size of DATA URI

(*2) see http://caniuse.com/datauri for specific browser version details. Note that IE8 has size restrictions on data URI rendering.

(*3) Notes client uses an embedded IE browser to render email MIME content since version 8.0. Notes uses whatever version of IE is installed on the user's system. It can be disabled via a preference (Disable embedded browser for MIME email) but this will not render the data URI image and show a broken link.

Table Details

IE = Internet Explorer Browser

FF = Firefox Browser

Chrome = Chrome Browser

Safari = Safari Browser

Notes = IBM Notes Client

9.0 = IBM iNotes Social Edition version 9.0 (see what's new)

8.5.3 = IBM iNotes version 8.5.3

SCNw = SmartCloud Notes web current version

Differences between SCNw and iNotes