OK, I've been scratching my head on this, and yet suspect there's a simple solution I'm overlooking.
I've created a test page at http://newkirk.us/sortlists.php The goal: Two lists of strings side-by-side. One contains 'available fields', the other contains 'selected fields'. (the actual contents are pulled from mysql tables and eventually the selected fields will be parsed and stuffed back into the appropriate DB table along with other settings that will be available on the same page) The 'selected' list should be limited to no more than 24 entries, while the 'available' list may contain up to 50 entries. Everything actually works just about how I want, with one irritating exception: If an entry is dragged from one list to the other, it MUST be dragged atop existing entries in the other list, dragging into the blank space below those entries just won't work. Obviously this is because I'm working with two UL elements, and they don't exist past the end of the defined list of LI children. So what are people doing to achieve this? How can I get the unoccupied space below the end of the present list of elements to also be a droppable space for the list? I don't want the visual layout to keep changing as the contents are sorted, I want the lists to remain a fixed length on the screen whether there's empty space or not. The other thing I want but haven't even tried to tackle yet is allowing the 'Available' list to occupy multiple columns. It's easy enough to add a third UL and allow dragging/sorting to involve it as well, but then the two 'available' lists would interact in a non- intuitive fashion. Any suggestions on this? (I'm thinking that it may require departing from the UL/LI approach, which is why I'm asking for advice on it now rather than after I've smoothed and polished the basic functionality I want) j
