[thelist] Help requested building a web standards based admin

Izaak Branderhorst izaak at victoria.tc.ca
Wed Feb 16 18:34:56 CST 2005


--On Wednesday, February 16, 2005 02:38:44 PM -0800 Jonathan Dillon 
<jdillon at boehm-ritter.com> wrote:

> Each one of these is a div.  I'm trying to implement a system that
> allows you to change the order of the divs, so on the page
> (dynamically, with buttons or drag and drop):

I think buttons are definitely a better approach. There are two 
button-based approaches: a link to self, where moving an item up or down 
refreshes the entire page; or making XML HTTP requests to a 'move' 
script, the server returning 1 or 0, then moving the tile appropriately 
with W3C DOM.

The latter approach should have a smoother response, plus you could 
properly implement a 'queue' allowing a few different buttons to be 
pressed quickly and the changes would be made as the responses come back 
from the server. I haven't yet seen this implemented but I plan to try it 
myself...

The former approach doesn't require any javascript and would probably 
involve less code overall. It can be seen in Mambo's admin interface 
<http://www.mamboserver.com/> (demo at <http://www.opensourcecms.com/>), 
and also in 'Ta-da Lists' <http://www.tadalist.com/>.

For a good article about using XML HTTP request objects, start at 
<http://www.allinthehead.com/retro/246/getting-very-dynamic-at-xmlcom>

I'd be interested in hearing your progress!

Izaak



More information about the thelist mailing list