// the find
mojombo/clippy
Clippy is a very simple Flash widget that makes it possible to place arbitrary text onto the client's clipboard.
A Flash-based clipboard widget from 2009 that lets you put a copy button on any web page. Tom Preston-Werner built this for GitHub back when `document.execCommand('copy')` didn't exist yet. It is a historical artifact.
- Solved a real problem cleanly for its era — Flash was the only cross-browser way to write to the clipboard in 2009
- Tiny scope: one .swf, one helper method, done. No framework, no dependencies beyond Flash Player
- HaXe source is included so you could actually understand and modify it, not just consume a black-box binary
- Flash Player reached end-of-life in December 2020 and is blocked by every modern browser — this widget is completely non-functional today
- Last commit is October 2011, nearly 15 years ago, and the project was abandoned well before Flash died
- The Clipboard API (`navigator.clipboard.writeText()`) has been available since Chrome 66 / Firefox 63 — there is no reason this approach exists anymore
- The Rails helper embeds text directly into a Flash parameter with no escaping, which would be an XSS vector if this were somehow still running