Added to Tips on 11/7/09.

Use 'copy and paste' when making super long blog posts.

A fail safe for your HTML form data is to copy it to the clipboard before sending.

Photo CC by avenueg

OK, it's a no-brainer, but I bet all of us has experienced this at one point or another.

You're sitting there crafting some beautiful type into an HTML form. You look up words in the dictionary. You revise. You craft the type again. You start to chant, "Oh, yes. This is a masterpiece!" After the final touches, you press the submit button and—what's this? WTF!—" A form error prevented your request." You hit the back key on the browser and your masterpiece is GONE!

The screaming can be heard three doors down the street, "Arrraaaaaaaaggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh! Fracking website!"

Possibly one of the best habits I've picked up while developing for the web every day is to use my old friend "The Clipboard" to store my carefully crafted type from HTML forms. Unfortunately, website forms tend to be complicated beasts. Lots of things can go wrong. Your network can go down. The receiving web server can hiccup from drinking to much beer. Perhaps the kid next door severs your Ethernet cable with his weed-whacker.

After a paragraph or two of type I begin to feel the risk of loss. All I do is select all the text I'm writing and do a quick "Command + C" to copy it to the clipboard. Then when I submit the form, if failure arises, all I have to do is paste back in what I had with "Command + V". It's a simple enough thing to do, so you can easily make it a habit. It's not like you have to start a Word Doc every-time you fill out a form. This is just one simple thing you can do to save a lot of headaches.

This will save you if the form, server or browser fails, but if your computer runs out of power, well your out of luck. Hopefully you have a notebook with a battery or at least of UPS backup.