Direct manipulation using JavaScript and CSS
by Kevin Dangoor
The Ajaxian Blog had a link to Direct Manipulation Using JavaScript and CSS, a bunch of fabulous examples of drag and drop and in-place editing, all in the web browser. I was using Firefox, not IE, and there are warnings about IE problems. Who needs IE support, anyway? It’s only about 90% of the browser population, after all.
These are very nice examples, and something to consider striving for as you’re building an app.
These things are pretty cool but they’re very “un-web-like”. I have a feeling alot of users wouldn’t know they were supposed to drag those boxes.
I think it depends on the app. There are certainly times where someone might *want* to do this (My Yahoo comes to mind), and may be pleasantly surprised to find out they can. Either way, the UI would have to provide guidance to the user to let them know that’s there…
Hmm true. I like that example. I suppose if it was an addition to an existing interface where you could still organize things in the old fashion for awhile that would work.