Comments on: Drag and drop via sneaky Textarea hack

By: mikepk

mikepk — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 22:50:14 +0000

I couldn’t help myself, I made another one and uploaded as HD. Definitely clearer.

By: mikepk

mikepk — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 21:40:33 +0000

We’ve been using a similar technique in our drag-and-drop editor on Grazr for a long time (over a year now, man startup time flies).

Our editor goes a step farther allowing the dragging and dropping of different kinds of resources (cross frame and cross browser window). IMHO it was one of the coolest pieces of tech we released, but we didn’t really get a lot of attention for it. We put in the engineering to have it function in IE, Safari, and FF (no idea about chrome).

I’ve been meaning to write up the technique, and why it’s such a powerful idea, something I’ve been referring to as a “semantic clipboard” of sorts but Grazr work has always gotten in the way. This post has inspired me to go back and document the technique, and how we took it well beyond this example/demo. I’ll try to write something up today or tomorrow with some details.

I shot a quick screencast showing dragging various data types cross window. Unfortunately it didn’t come out very clearly.

http://vimeo.com/1660790

The editor is live on Grazr.com, you just need an account to access it.

By: antimatter15

antimatter15 — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:55:47 +0000

On Chrome, it only works when you drag the image to the very top of the fridge, then you can move the image. Interesting concept. is it any faster/easier to implement than the traditional way?

By: Nosredna

Nosredna — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:24:25 +0000

Cool idea, ruined by a cruel and heartless world.

By: Jeria

Jeria — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:06:09 +0000

Fails in Opera and Safari as well, Firefox only?

By: fatlotus

fatlotus — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:02:44 +0000

Huh. I something similar to allow drag-and-drop upload with a file select input – Unfortunately, it only really worked in Safari or Firefox with a special extension enabled.

By: zachleat

zachleat — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 14:40:12 +0000

Love the idea! Even if it doesn’t work in IE, it is still a clever way to use functionality that already exists in the browser in a new and inventive way.

By: XHR

XHR — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 12:38:22 +0000

Doesn’t seem to want to work with Chrome :P