Best tools web app that makes heavy use of dragging and dropping widgets on a page

Question

I'm in the research phase for a web application I'm considering building and need some advice on the best choosing the best technology for the job.

The app will make heavy use of dragging and dropping widgets onto a page and on top of other widgets.

Two frameworks I'm aware of that have good support for this kind of thing are Sproutcore and Cappuccino.

Are there any others technologies I should be aware of which would do a better job?

For an example of the type of application I'm interested in building, please see http://gomockingbird.com/ (a cappuccino application).

Though I must emphasise I'm not trying to build a mockingbird clone, this is just an example of the type of drag and drop functionality I want in my app.

Answer 1

From everything that I've used, jQuery is by far the best tool for the job. It offers an easy-to-use syntax and a nearly endless supply of plugins that solve exactly the problem of dragging and dropping things around a website.

A very good first base to check is jQuery UI. It enables a lot of functionality and very rarely is there a case that requires something more advanced than jQuery UI can offer. If you find one, there's probably a plugin already covering that too.

Answer 2

I can't speak for Sproutcore but Cappuccino has great, easy to implement drag and drop. See the Cappuccino Scrapbook Tutorial for example. If you follow along the steps you can decide if Cappuccino is overkill for your application. The Floor Plan demo app also demonstrates Cappuccino drag and drop in action together with some extra niceties like rotation controls on widgets. The source code is available. Personally I think writing an app like Mockingbird without a full power framework like Cappuccino would be frustrating.

Answer 3

the DnD features you want are easily achievable with Sproutcore. Sproutcore itself is a great framework that is extremely powerful, and I believe it will become increasingly popular in the future. There is a bit of a learning curve though. Once you get the MVC nature and work with the frameworks, things are pretty straightforward....