Drag and drop comes to Backpack 23 Jun 2005
28 comments Latest by Jase
By popular demand we’ve implemented drag and drop reordering of to-dos and notes in Backpack (watch a video demo). We’ll also be adding drag and drop to Basecamp when we revamp the to-do list section shortly for Basecamp 2.
Special thanks goes out to Thomas Fuchs and his wonderful Script.aculo.us free “Web 2.0 Javascript” libraries. The drop and drop javascript code in Backpack is based on Thomas’ work. Many of these javascript effects will also be integrated into the next version of our open source Ruby on Rails web application framework. It’s never been easier to bring higher-level interactivity to your web apps. Of course, remember that just because you can doesn’t mean you should (from our 1999 Manifesto).
28 comments so far (Jump to latest)
Paul 23 Jun 05
Brilliant, guys, brilliant!
-b- 23 Jun 05
If there was a UI fetish for dragging and dropping, that video would serve it well. It rules.
dmr 23 Jun 05
Now THAT’S smooth! Great idea.
SteveC 23 Jun 05
Can’t get this to work in Firefox 1.0.4 on windows 2k sp4, the drag icon appears but when when I drag the cursor changes to the black circle with a line accross it. Saying “Can’t move it to here” icon.
:(
JF 23 Jun 05
SteveC, it’s a caching issue with FireFox. See this post in the Backpack forums that explains how to get it to work.
David Heinemeier Hansson 23 Jun 05
To anyone having problems: Make sure to force reload your browser. It may very well be caching the old Javascript file.
Dave Simon 23 Jun 05
You guys seriously rock!
ichigo 23 Jun 05
great work of thomas fuchs…maybe he should get some reward for it…would be a nice gesture i think
Raymond 23 Jun 05
Hey… whatever happened to enormicom.com?!?
JF 23 Jun 05
eNormicom lives
Alex Aguilar 23 Jun 05
very nice. Netflix has this feature when you’ve just added a movie in a mini-queue but not for their main queue yet.
Dan Hellerich 23 Jun 05
I’ve got to say, that works really well. I currently am working on some things in SharePoint, and Microsoft has some IE-only drag and drop things built in, but you never know if you’re above the item or below the item yet, and there are weird reactions to left-right motion when the list is just reorder-able vertically. The way you make the other items plop down below the item you drag up, and the way you keep the items from going left-to-right is beautiful.
It just reminds me about how, what I thought were some cool [*cough* platform dependent] rich JavaScript tricks from Microsoft, pale in comparison to what you guys do after thinking for just a little while longer.
Bravo, Thomas & the 37-ers.
Michael Spina 23 Jun 05
Wow, that’s nice. It very elegantly solves the problem of moving a few items from the bottom to the middle of a longish list. In fact, I can’t think of any disadvantages over the old system. It takes up less space, you have more freedom, and it’s cool as hell!
Jonathan Fenocchi 23 Jun 05
All right, this is great! I was seriously considering writing a Greasemonkey script for Backpack to implement drag ‘n’ drop, but you guys beat me, so kudos and many thanks!
Jeff Koke 23 Jun 05
Serious rockage. Works great for me. Please, please, please add this to the milestones page on Basecamp (in the calendar). Being able to drag milestones from one day to another would be extremely helpful.
Adam Michela 23 Jun 05
Ah, nice work Thomas!
JF 23 Jun 05
We’ll be bringing of a lot of cool and useful stuff to Basecamp as we work through the revamp. Basecamp is considerably more complex than Backpack so it’s going to take a bit longer, but we’ll get there.
Matt 23 Jun 05
Very cool. I wonder if there’s a way to add a grabbable “handle” next to titles that makes them draggable all the time, so you could remove the “reorder” from the UI entirely. Might be too subtle that way though.
Jenna 23 Jun 05
I’ve been waiting for this feature. Excellent!
Kim Siever 23 Jun 05
It would be really cool if you could drag and drop while adding a series of list items, rather than having to leave the page and come back in.
Asenchi 23 Jun 05
Awesome add! This is a great feature. Can I suggest a little addon to this? When you click Reorder and teh ‘DRAG’ icons appear, it would be cool if the check boxes no longer ‘completed’ a task but that were to select multiple tasks you could drag and drop ALL of those selected. Just an idea. I have a CD wishlist and I’ve never ordered it b/c of the hassle and noticed that this would be a good feature add. Either way what a great idea and implementation. Thanks a lot.
Erik 23 Jun 05
Any chance this could be implemented in Ta-Da lists?
JF 23 Jun 05
We’ll be implementing this in Basecamp, but I don’ t know about Ta-da. We’ll see if we have extra time.
bort 23 Jun 05
while it’s cool that this is being added to basecamp, i am surprised at how many seem to think that drag-and-drop reordering of lists on the web is a new invention or something… (based on the comments)
Manisha 24 Jun 05
Is there keyboard alternative for this drag-and-drop?
amber 01 Jul 05
Really like this feature. One small request for those of us operating our Backpacks with Very Small Brains or on Very Little Coffee: rename the ‘reorder’ link, ‘toggle reorder’ or something like that (or better!).
As you know, while reordering, the editing/trashing function is gone (which is fine) and it took me a while to figure out that by clicking ‘reorder’ again, I could have editing/trashing back.
Just my 2c. Thanks.
Jase 14 Apr 06
Guess you didn’t have time, because about 10 months later and still no drag-andd-drop in Ta-Da Lists. Too bad, because the click-click-click reordering there makes it a pain to use with large lists.