Drag and drop on iPad2

Is it possible?

As well as the obvious uses in word processing, I like to re-arrange the BBC Home Page, a facility I assume some here are familiar with.

A few months ago, iPad(1) days I think, I asked in the Trafford Centre Apple shop and got treated like a doddering old git . I'm not sure if that was because I'm obviously over 35 or because the assistant didn't know the answer to that or a couple of other deeper questions than "Does it do Twitter?"

Maybe even the idea of even looking at the BBC website completely blew his mind .

Drag and drop isn't really a great way of moving stuff on a touch screen. You can drop something where you don't want it if for whatever reason your drag is interrupted.

Many desktop operations don't make sense on a touch screen.

So how do you move it? That is the requirement, the method less important . You can't delete these sections from the website and insert them elsewhere.

Have you seen www.bbc.co.uk and played with it?

Well I'm saying that the browser support javascript and so websites that do it may let you drag and drop.

But there's no API for apps to do that.

The latest suggestion I've had at John Lewis is that the iPad2/Safari doesn't support Flash, and that the BBC website is Flash-based.

I have my doubts about the validity of that, but not ruling out the possibility.

Thanks for your input though .

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

The latest suggestion I've had at John Lewis is that the iPad2/Safari doesn't support Flash, and that the BBC website is Flash-based.

The JL staff probably only look at the pictures

The videos on the Beeb pages are Flash, but it seems hard to believe that Safari won't play them

Not on an iPad, it won't. Flash is not supported on the iPad.

But I don't think that is connected with the OP's problem. The drag and drop aspect of the BBC Glow JavaScript libraries just doesn't work on an iPad because of the way that the "mouse" is handled. I'm afraid that Safari on an iPad, fun though it is, is not the full web-browsing experience.

It's poor programming of the site. There are vast number of people on mobile devices who won't be able to use these features.

In reply to a post by gilesjuk:

It's poor programming of the site. There are vast number of people on mobile devices who won't be able to use these features.

To be fair, we are talking about the main site. They do have an easily accessible mobile version. Just that on my only current mobile device, (Nokia N900), full-version websites are fine, Maemo version of Firefox is included, so I haven't had to bother with mobile versions of anything.

The N900 has the same problem, and I don't see it as the site designers' fault. It is simply that the device OS has no mechanism for the normal click-and-hold then drag on a touch-screen. I blame the technology, not the site. It only needs a key or key combination to lock the screen and allow drag, from the user perspective, and after that most of the code is already there.

I can tolerate it on the N900, but on a decent-sized wham-bam-"I'mTheGreatest" piece of kit I'm disappointed.

Surely it isn't beyond the wit of the programmers to cater for this sort of thing? How do you manage in the WP app? Even on these forums I use drag/drop a lot.

I'm not sure that it's reasonable to blame the BBC when only one device doesn't work with that particular version of their web site. If all web sites have to support the lowest common denominator then things will never progress.

I'm surprised that Apple haven't included a hand gesture to allow drag and drop (perhaps a 3 finger drag?). As you say, it would be very useful in some applications and surely wouldn't be that difficult to implement. Perhaps in iOS 5?

I'm sure other mobile browsers will struggle too.

Tablets are replacing laptops in many households and smartphones are everywhere. It's not reasonable to code websites for desktops alone any more.

You mean it's not reasonable for mobile OSs to be able to do something that is a basic part of Windows and I assume Apple MAC OSs functionality that the vast majority of people looking for greater convenience than laptop lumps use many times a day?

Even a smartphone can never be realistic as a main browser. Tablets, simply because of the bigger screen, could be.

So data will soon all be held in The Cloud. Fine. At which point the current ease of moving stuff between folders is exterminated?

I'm not quite sure what you are trying to prove, but you are rapidly turning what was a minor niggle on my part into an expose' of a potentially major deficiency with any touch-screen device that seriously aims to replace conventional equipment.

There is more to the internet than Twitter and Facebook.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

a potentially major deficiency with any touch-screen device

A strictly personal viewpoint- I first used (and programmed for) touchscreens about 25 years ago, I didn't like 'em then and I don't like 'em now

In reply to a post by billford:

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

The latest suggestion I've had at John Lewis is that the iPad2/Safari doesn't support Flash, and that the BBC website is Flash-based.

The JL staff probably only look at the pictures

The videos on the Beeb pages are Flash, but it seems hard to believe that Safari won't play them

The second person called in by the first of the three that ended up involved seemed to think that Flash functionality may be on its way, but as the apparent guru to the other two he could just have been being smooth.

Although that would allow Flash video to play, I can't see the relevance to the drag/drop issue. What is more likely is that Ajax and Javascript are involved.

Ummm. So you browse to a hotel website where they do the 360degree room panning video under user control. If that doesn't work, which by the sound of things it won't ....

The limitations start to surface. But better this way than after buying one . Which isn't to say I won't be doing so, but at least I will know what I'm (not) getting instead of being bamboozled by the fashionistas, marketing hype and salesmen.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

There is more to the internet than Twitter and Facebook.

Couldn't agree more.

So many people now confuse the "big video game" that is the World Wide Web with the Internet.

Not on an iPad, it won't. Flash is not supported on the iPad.

Nor on the iPhone, yet oddly I am currently watching the report about Sienna Miller's phone tapping on it. iPlayer works a treat too.

But you are right - not related to the OP's problem. Worth noting that touchscreens don't play nicely with the hover attribute either (for fairly obviously reasons). Touching the screen would be mousedown and "touch and hold" invokes copy and paste.

Yes. The BBC have adapted much of their website to play nicely with the iPad, as have many other sites. I don't think they can be condemned for the fact that this particular function doesn't work on their home page. It's not as if the home page isn't functional (apart from this one small aspect of it).

I'd be interested to know how Android devices handle this.

To suggest that web designers shouldn't be allowed to provide extra functionality on more capable platforms is just ridiculous. Some text-only browsers still exist; so graphics should be forbidden?

It's certainly not impossible to implement. A quick Google shows that Android devices support drop and drag (although whether a particular browser does might be another question). I'm sure that this is something that Apple will provide in a future version of iOS. We mustn't forget that we are still in the early days of tablet devices.

I'd agree that touchscreen technology is nowhere near as ergonomic as mice and keyboards, but it has it's place in devices such as the iPad. But it's by no means perfect yet. The technology, and ways of using it, will get better.

The IR illuminated type where your pinkie interrupts the horizontal and vertical beams to give a coordinate?

In reply to a post by john2007:

The IR illuminated type where your pinkie interrupts the horizontal and vertical beams to give a coordinate?

I think that was the method used- Hewlett-Packard ruggedised video terminals for machine shop use.

We were designing some equipment for measuring components whilst still on the lathe, and the boss thought it would be a cool idea if the operator didn't have to use a keypad

It wasn't very successful (though for other reasons), and we ended up doing it a different way.

We're talking web sites here, not web applications.

I wouldn't for one minute say that a powerful web application shouldn't be allowed to use powerful features. But even many web applications now support iPads and iPhones. Those that don't have an iPad or iPhone client.

A web site needs to maximise its audience to bring in the advertising revenue and in some cases a commerce web site that is poorly designed will result in a loss of a sale.

As for text browsers, there is a case for ensuring a web site still works with text, it helps the visually impaired enjoy the web too as screen readers will use alt tags in image tags in a web page.

The site the OP was talking about was a BBC one, you can argue that such an organisation has a duty to ensure that their site is usable by all the people who have to pay the TV licence tax (which is pretty much everyone with a TV).

The site the OP was talking about was a BBC one, you can argue that such an organisation has a duty to ensure that their site is usable by all the people who have to pay the TV licence tax (which is pretty much everyone with a TV).

Jeez. Do you really suppose the fact that iPad owners can't rearrange the page matters that much? It's not as if the site is unusable in any way, just this little feature doesn't work on iPads. It's not a big deal.

That feature doesn't matter that much. But there's been some real problems with government and public service sites in the past. Thankfully much of that has changed now.

Nobody wants websites that only run with IE.

Web development is my job and one of the products I work on was written around IE and some of the management would love it to run on iPads and the like. But given so much of the code is IE specific it would take a lot of work to rewrite.

For a much easier life it is better to try to be standards compliant and use libraries like jQuery which are cross browser.

Edited by deleted (Sat 14-May-11 13:32:23)

It is nothing whatsoever to do with the browser. It is a basic OS facility. Period.

You seem fixated on it being the website designers fault. It isn't. It also applies to word processing, forum use such as this one that I have already mentioned, file and folder moving if you are doing Cloud data storage or webmail. And that's just off the top of my head.

Oh, how about FTP'ing from a memory card in the iPad to ones own website?

I'm araid that you come across as yet another person knocking the BBC just for the sake of it. (And incidently trying to pin the responsibility for the atypical behaviour of the iPad web browser on anyone but Apple.)

The BBC home web page works just fine on an iPad; the only thing that doesn't work is the added feature of being able to drag and drop components. That this doesn't work is nothing to do with cross-browser components, it is a simple fact that the web browser on the iPad doesn't support drag and drop because it hijacks the mouse-down drag event for its own purposes (to scroll the screen). That is a question, as far as I am concerned, of the browser failing to conform to normal standards rather than the web site being at fault.

This is not the only example where the iPad web browser falls short of the functionality of web browsers on real computers. It's not a particularly big deal, but there's no point in pretending that the web-browsing experience on an iPad can equal that on a full-blown computer.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that there's no problem in general with drag and drop on an iPad. Several applications do allow you to drag objects on the screen, so there's no reason why an application such as a word processor couldn't implement it.

The problem (if it is a problem) is that the iPad uses the mouse-down drag event to scroll the screen in many applications. This obviously precludes its use to also drag icons. (But I can think of several mechanisms that would allow both functions. For example, triple finger drag, or holding one finger at a particular point on the screen and dragging with the other.)

You also have to realize that you can't interact with the file system on an iPad in the same way that you can on a PC. It's the nature of the beast.

In reply to a post by AEP:

The problem (if it is a problem) is that the iPad uses the mouse-down drag event to scroll the screen in many applications. This obviously precludes its use to also drag icons. (But I can think of several mechanisms that would allow both functions. For example, triple finger drag, or holding one finger at a particular point on the screen and dragging with the other.)

Google Reader is annoying on the iPad browser, you need two finger scroll to move the article.

Also RobertoS - any FTP client on the iPad would have access only to its own data in its own area.

There is no such thing as drag and drop in a browser. It is emulated using various existing events like onClick, onMoveOver, onFocus, onBlur. With the actual manipulation done behind the scenes in the DOM.

You'll find various drag and drop engines around the web, these are probably going to fail with some browsers.

If the iPad did not support drag and drop in the core OS then you would not be able to rearrange icons on the home screens.

This says it is possible:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1619790/drag-and-...

So it is obviously the BBC devs who are lame not Apple.

Thanks to both you AEP and James (jchamier). Some logical and sensible posts from you both leading up to me getting a bit of clarity about my initial questions.

Our super-duper website designer contributor seems from what I've seen by looking at the two posts in the thread he just linked to in supposed support of his opinion, (it's a bit late to delve deeper into there tonight), to have given us a link to it being down to a default (maybe fixed) setting in the iPad implementation of Mobile Safari. Thus at first glance looking as though it completely destroys his argument.

The two of you seem to be adding considerable weight to something I heard one of the John Lewis bods saying to a couple, as I walked past, that it wasn't a computer, you still need a computer.

There is a feature on the N900 that temporarily disables the screen dragging, so enabling icon positioning. That doesn't apply within the Firefox browser though. So perhaps the iPad is a bit better than that.

I think I shall go into a different Apple Store soon, and not mention the BBC website. Just ask if drag'n'drop is possible. My webmail example for instance - where you can need to play with folders. And by webmail, I mean that I log into on my mail-host's site, not necessarily the iPad App or MobileMe. Though maybe they won't be aware such things exist .

Maybe also how you upload jpegs from a memory card to a website, or even from the iPad's own storage.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

The two of you seem to be adding considerable weight to something I heard one of the John Lewis bods saying to a couple, as I walked past, that it wasn't a computer, you still need a computer.

Yes - I have an iPad (1) and its pretty much an enlarged iPhone or iPod Touch - that said its extremely good as a content consumer device. Its not as good at creating content, but there are some really clever apps on the store - and the new iPad 2 is so much faster.

There is a feature on the N900 that temporarily disables the screen dragging, so enabling icon positioning. That doesn't apply within the Firefox browser though. So perhaps the iPad is a bit better than that.

Its possible another browser can do what you're after; but its not a gesture that you actually use very often.

You can drag icons (apps and web shortcuts) on the home screen anywhere else you like, you hold and then they start wiggling, in that mode they're draggable and sit where you put them in a grid. Then you press the home button and they lock.

I think I shall go into a different Apple Store soon, and not mention the BBC website. Just ask if drag'n'drop is possible. My webmail example for instance - where you can need to play with folders. And by webmail, I mean that I log into on my mail-host's site, not necessarily the iPad App or MobileMe. Though maybe they won't be aware such things exist .

I really don't think the iPad is very good with drag/drop websites. I can't use my OWA on Safari as its not IE, and that's the only drag/drop email website I have. GMail and Yahoo don't seem to use drag/drop in my desktop experience in Firefox.

That said most people would use the iPad's own email client via IMAP or POP to check their email. Its a lot better than using the web browser. Even better is GMail (free) or Exchange ActiveSync (available from lots of providers, from £6/month) which sync contacts/calendars/mail between multiple devices.

Maybe also how you upload jpegs from a memory card to a website, or even from the iPad's own storage.

Simple you can't. The iPad camera connection kit which provides a USB plug and SD card reader is extra cost. All this does is copy the photos from the camera or SD card into the iPads "photo roll".

This is part of the photos app where any pictures you save from a web page (or take with the camera on the iPad 2) are stored. When you connect to a PC using the apple USB cable then you can access these photos as JPG or PNG (if screenshot) and copy off / delete using Windows Explorer or similar. You cannot copy TO this storage area.

iTunes is how you manage the iPad in the same way as an iPhone or iPod Touch, and iTunes can be told to pick up folders full of pictures and sync them to the pad for viewing. It does a seriously good job and the iPad screen is stunning.

However if you're looking for the ultimate flexibility that a laptop would give you, the iPad is not for you - maybe worth reading the Motorola Zoom reviews or the Asus eeePad Transformer? (see www.modaco.com for a UK android forum site).

If you know anyone with an iPhone or iPod Touch then the iPad basically is the same, with the benefit of a much larger screen - the web browser for example shows desktop sites, not mobile sites.

(Edit - fix broken quotes)

Edited by jchamier (Mon 16-May-11 20:42:07)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Is it possible?

No - not in Safari on the iPad 1. Each box highlights as you touch it, but there is no way to move it. Even with 2 or more fingers nothing moves.

I can hit the edit and X links and customise or remove "portlets" but I cannot reorganise the order of the "portlets".

I've also tried the alternative browser on the App Store called Atomic Web and it can't do it either.

A very good summary of the strengths and weaknesses of the iPad. I agree that it is a very useful tool in it's own right, but it certainly cannot replace a computer.

In reply to a post by AEP:

it certainly cannot replace a computer.

Exactly - you need a Windows or Mac (not Linux) computer to activate and sync it with (ie, back up) and upgrade firmware. This machine needs to run iTunes and have a USB 2 port.

Possibly a better idea is to wait for the Blackberry Playbook.

In reply to a post by orly:

Possibly a better idea is to wait for the Blackberry Playbook.

Bwahahahahahahahahahahaahhaahaa

Have you used one?

Certainly looks interesting, though the April reviews don't make me say "must have!"

One "big" thing in iPad's favour is the 10" screen. (Age-related MACadvantage).