A frequently overlooked and underused feature of Dojo’s Drag-and-Drop (DnD) module is drag handles.

DnD is commonly implemented as a set of draggable elements where the entire DnD item (usually a subtree of DOM nodes) can detect the drag action. In some cases, this is not desirable:

• DnD items that contain active elements: links, text areas, buttons, check boxes, other common form elements. The drag action can prevent normal interactions with them, e.g., text selection inside text boxes.
• Large DnD items that occupy most of screen. Frequently these items have collapsed and expanded states, and should not be dragged while expanded.

Continue reading