Add a placeholder for boxes

As far as I have tested, implementing the placeholder isn't clean. From the testing I did, adding the placeholder makes boxes shrink and flash because of the placeholder width and height. Which lead to non-natural drag/drop behaviour.

Plus implememting this would require an additional setting, because I don't think everyone would want the placeholder to be shown, well at least, I don't.

Of course if anyone has some patch and/or guidelines that just works smoothly in any browser (I mean IEx, Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera), I'd be glad to test.

BTW, for now it isn't clean enough for me to implement.
Jérémy

Changing the title to be more revelant

Showing a placeholder/dropzone could probably be achieved by using the 'placeholder' and 'forcePlaceholderSize' options in jquery ui sortables. They allow you to set the class which can then be given a dashed border etc...

It looks like

      // placeholder: 'homebox-placeholder',
      // forcePlaceholderSize: true,

has been commented out in homebox.js?

anyway, great module! it combines a great user interface with ease of use - excellent work!

I would have to agree that this is somewhat of a needed feature eventually.

As I play around with homebox, I sometimes have a hard time trying to figure where to place the blocks.
Placing the blocks isn't hard when you put them between two blocks because the other blocks move, however, trying to put a block at the bottom can be very finiky because you don't know if you are in the right spot or not.

I can see this being very frustrating for clients who aren't computer savvy and/or have no patience.

It works great for me.
I uncommented the following
// placeholder: 'homebox-placeholder',
// forcePlaceholderSize: true,
in homebox.js
and replaced #homebox .homebox-placeholder { border....}
with this:
#homebox .homebox-placeholder {
visibility: visible !important;
background: #dddddd;
}

That way I don't use the borders and it doesn't effect the sizes.

i don't know if this would be of any help:
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/javascript-ajax/inettuts/

But those regions are a real must. When you move all your blocks to the right or center and the left region is empty it's hard to place a block in the left region.

I tried out the suggestion in #5, and it worked great for me. I do think something like this is necessary - its very hard to place blocks at the bottom of a column or into an empty column. This patch makes it much easier, although moving very tall blocks into the bottom of a column is still difficult.

Here's a patch to the module that implements the code in #5. I left the 1px dotted black border on the placeholder.

Fixed in 1.3!

Wow, 1.3 is out???!!!!!! nice!