JavaScript get clipboard data on paste event (Cross browser)

Question

How can a web application detect a paste event and retrieve the data to be pasted?

I would like to remove HTML content before the text is pasted into a rich text edi

Answer 1

I've written a little proof of concept for Tim Downs proposal here with off-screen textarea. And here goes the code:

Just copy and paste the whole code into one html file and try to paste (using ctrl-v) text from clipboard anywhere on the document.

I've tested it in IE9 and new versions of Firefox, Chrome and Opera. Works quite well. Also it's good that one can use whatever key combination he prefers to triger this functionality. Of course don't forget to include jQuery sources.

Feel free to use this code and if you come with some improvements or problems please post them back. Also note that I'm no Javascript developer so I may have missed something (=>do your own testign).