[whatwg] drag and drop between apps or onto desktop

[Ian Hickson]

On Wed, 24 Sep 2008, Daniel Glazman wrote:
> 
> I have a question related to section 6.8.4.2 of the spec and more
> generally drag and drop:
> 
> 1. suppose I have an chrome- or web-based app having a sidebar.
> 2. this sidebar can contain multiple sidebar items
> 3. drag and drop of these sidebar items into the sidebar
>    allows me to reorder them, no problem so far
> 4. but I also want to be able to drop a sidebar item onto
>    the desktop to make it become an independant window...
> 
> Did I miss something or item 4 above is impossible to achieve with the 
> current spec ? Even if you drop a URL, the desktop will likely create a 
> shortcut (for instance on window) and won't open a window.

Yeah, as currently written the drop behaviour is up to the target, so if 
the source provides a URL as the data, the desktop is likely to treat it 
as a request to create a link (and a browser window a request to navigate 
to that link).

In general the drag and drop section is intended for dragging and dropping 
data (as in copy and paste). For dragging of UI elements, I recommend 
using the mouse events. HTML5, CSSOM, or the DOM Events spec will probably 
gain a method to allow mouse capturing, so that you can determine whether 
the element is being dragged out of its container.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'