While doing web development, I frequently need to insert lorem ipsum into a text field or textarea. To do this – bearing in mind that I don’t really like or use bookmarks, too messy – I tend to google “lorem ipsum”, hit lipsum.com, select/copy the block of text, and then return to my form field and paste it.

I wanted a quicker solution, and as I find myself using IE more and more to develop in now (thanks to the excellent ‘Developer Tools’ extension – never thought I’d say that!) my lorem ipsum fix would have to be in the form of an IE toolbar button or menu item.

Solution

It turns out that adding a simple javascript based text field filler option to a context menu is really easy, so that’s what I did. Here are the steps:

Firstly: Create the javascript to access the currently focused field, and insert the lorem ipsum text. Create a new html file in a location of your choice –  I used C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\Plugins – and copy the following code into it:

<script language="JavaScript">
var parentwin = external.menuArguments;
var doc = parentwin.document;
var rng = doc.selection.createRange();
rng.text = "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, \
sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. \
Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi \
ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit \
in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur \
sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt \
mollit anim id est laborum.";
</script>

Save the file as loremipsum.htm.

Secondly: Create the registry entry for the menu item:

1. Open/run ‘regedit’ (Start > run… > “regedit” > ‘Ok’)
2. Use the tree to navigate to:
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MenuExt
   using the tree view on the left of the Registry Editor.
3. Create a new key (Right click, “New” > “Key”) and call it “Lorem Ipsum” or anything you like.
4. Inside the new key, open the ‘default’ string value that’s already there (double click on it), and enter the path to the script you created just now. i.e. C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\Plugins\loremipsum.htm
5. Now create a new DWORD value (Right click, “New” > “DWORD Value”) and rename it “Contexts”. Set the value to 0×04 (hex) or 4 (decimal). Here’s an explanation of the different values.

The new Key and values in RegEdit

That’s it! Now open IE, find a textarea or text field, right click, and you should see something like this:

Note the new highlighted option in the context menu

Here are a few expressions that came in handy. I intend to add to this list as time goes on.
Regexp shown in Green, my comments in Red.

CSV Editing:

Remove spaces and tab characters at the beginning of a line:
Find what: ^[ \t]+
Replace With: don't enter anything in the field
Remove spaces and tab characters at the end of a line:
Find what: [ \t]+$
Replace With: don't enter anything in the field
Add “Hello” to the beginning of every line:
Find what: \(^.*\)
Replace With: Hello \1
Add “Hello ” to the beginning and ” World” to the end of every line:
Find what: \(^.*\)
Replace With: Hello \1 World (watch the spaces)
Find empty fields (i.e. “, ,”) with spaces or tabs in, and replace with empty field (“,,”):
Find what: ,[ \t*],
Replace With: ,, (just that, nothing else, just 2 commas)
Remove blank lines in a text file, by searching for two linebreaks next to each other, and replacing with one:
Find what: \n\n
Replace With: \n

Replacement Expressions:

Extract email addresses only from the following text: “Joe Blogs (job.blogs@blogsworld.com)”
This expression searches for 2 tagged expressions, firstly any printable characters including spaces up to the first open bracket symbol, secondly anything between the brackets. It then replaces the whole line with the second match.
Find what: ^\([[:graph:] ]+\)(\([[:graph:] ]+\))
Replace With: \2

Notes:

• The expressions above need the ‘Regular Expression’ condition to be ticked in the Find or Replace dialogue boxes for them to work.
• Text pad needs to be set to use UNIX not POSIX style expressions. To set this, open ‘Configure > Preferences’ (Ctrl+Q,P), find the ‘Editor’ settings, and untick the ‘Use POSIX regular expression syntax’ box.