If you've never looked into using the HTML Drag and Drop API, I've created a super simple code example that uses the least code possible to demonstrate how simple it is to allow one element to be dragged into another one on a web page.

First, here's the HTML:

Notice the draggable attribute set to true, and the IDs that I'll use as hooks in the JavaScript. Here's the JavaScript:

Here I'm listening for the dragover and drop events to ensure that the element gets moved properly. The move itself is accomplished using the well-known appendChild() method.

And that's it! Aside from the variable declarations, it's just 6 lines of JavaScript. This code on its own isn't going to do a whole lot. All it does is drag the 'box' element into the 'dropzone' element.

You can see this in action in this CodePen demo, which also includes a little extra code that does the following:

• Adds some styles to indicate that the box is draggable and that the dropzone is being dragged over
• Listens for the dragend event to remove styles indicating that the box is draggable and disables the 'dragged over' styles
• Switches the draggable attribute to false

Now on to this week's tools!
 

JavaScript Libraries and Frameworks

Working From Home? Try Team.Video
Team.video makes it easier and faster for remote teams to work together by offering user friendly video meetings with agendas, collaborative notes, and emoji responses. No download required and it’s free to use.   via Syndicate

p5.js
Now at version 1+. JavaScript library for creative coding, with a focus on making coding accessible and inclusive for artists, designers, educators, and beginners.

Hex Engine
A modern 2D game engine for the browser, written in TypeScript and designed to feel similar to React.

LInQer
The C# Language Integrated Queries ported for JavaScript for amazing performance.

Type Route
A flexible, type safe routing library, built on top of the same core library that powers React Router.

Angular
The popular framework is now a version 9.

Mirage JS
An API mocking library that lets you build, test and share a complete working JavaScript application without having to rely on any back-end services.

Solid
A declarative, efficient, and flexible JavaScript library for building user interfaces that doesn't use a virtual DOM.

Alpine.js
A rugged, minimal framework for composing JavaScript behavior in your markup.

BlockLike.js
An educational JavaScript library that bridges the gap between block-based and text-based programming.

Testing and Debugging Tools

Beginner JavaScript by Wes Bos is 50% Off!
The master package includes 88 HD videos, part of 15 modules – and course updates are free forever.   promoted 

Screenshot Cyborg
Take a full-page screenshot of a webpage, up to 50 URLs at once. Choose to render the screenshot for desktop, tablet, or phone.

Stryker Mutator
A testing toolkit for JavaScript (also Scala and C#) that uses mutation testing, which means tests are run after bugs, or mutants, are automatically inserted into your code.

Cypress
Now at version 4+. Fast, easy, and reliable end-to-end testing for anything that runs in a browser.

Color Contrast Checker
Online tool that analyses and suggests colors that meet the required contrast ratio. Creates shareable links for chosen contrast checks.

LeakLooker X
Discover, browse and monitor database or source code leaks.

Animockup
Online prototype/animation tool to create animated mockups in your browser and export as video or animated GIF.

single-spa Devtools Inspector
A Firefox/Chrome devtools extension to provide utilities for helping with applications using single-spa (framework for front-end microservices).

micro-jaymock
Tiny API mocking microservice for generating fake JSON data.

The Contrast Triangle
Tool for simultaneously checking text, link, and background contrast. This one also has shareable links for specific tests.

Shieldfy
Automated security assistant that integrates with GitHub to show you potential vulnerabilities in your code.

puppeteer-in-electron
Use puppeteer to test and control your Electron application.

Site Builders, CMS's, Static Sites, etc.

Advanced React & GraphQL by Wes Bos is 50% Off!
The master package includes 68 HD videos, part of 10 modules – and course updates are free forever.   promoted 

LiveCanvas
Pure HTML and CSS WordPress builder that uses Bootstrap 4 and helps pages achieve better SEO results.

React Blog
A blogging system built on React where the blog posts are individual GitHub issues.

Calcapp
A cloud-based app designer enabling you to create apps without having to do any programming.

Factor JS
A JavaScript CMS platform that lets you build powerful and professional JavaScript applications fast.

NoCo
Enterprise-grade, no-code platform for Node or React developers. Generate code for most of your app, and only write the parts that make your product unique.

Sitebot
Create a personal website in a few minutes by just chatting. Seems to require Facebook Messenger login.

Webcodesk
A powerful visual development tool for building React apps. It's tightly coupled to the React API, so the knowledge translates directly.

BuilderX
A browser based design tool that codes React Native and React for you.

gatsby-plugin-next-seo
A plug-in that makes managing your SEO easier in Gatsby projects.

lego
A fast static site generator that generates optimised, performant websites.

Kodular
A drag-and-drop no-code app builder.

A Tweet for Thought

Send Me Your Tools!

Made something? Send links via Direct Message on Twitter @WebToolsWeekly (details here). No tutorials or articles, please. If you have any suggestions for improvement or corrections, feel free to reply to this email.
 

Before I Go...

If a tech conference that you were going to attend has been cancelled, you might want to check out 40 Conferences Gone Virtual, by Spokable, which is tracking which conferences are happening online.

Thanks to everyone for subscribing and reading!

Keep tooling,
Louis
webtoolsweekly.com
@WebToolsWeekly
PayPal.me/WebToolsWeekly

Last week I covered a really simple introduction to the HTML Drag and Drop API, for those of you who have never used it before. The demo has the minimum code required to produce a drag and drop example. Let's take that a little further and incorporate the dataTransfer object, which has methods and properties that can be used in the midst of a drag and drop operation.

First, I can use the setData() method of the dataTransfer object, which I'll incorporate in the midst of my event listener when listening for a dragstart event (an event I didn't need to use in the previous demo). The relevant line looks something like this (where "e" is the event object):

As you can see, the setData() method takes two arguments: The data type and the data itself. In this case, the data is simply the innerHTML of the dragged element. This is the first step in transferring data: Setting the data, which happens when the element is initially dragged.

The next key line in my code will be using the getData() method. In this case, I'll use it when the drop event is triggered on my drop area element:

The data that I'll be grabbing is text that represents a valid CSS color keyword, which will be inside each draggable element. The data could be a lot of things, but in this case I'm just using some text for demo purposes. And as you can see, the text sets the background color of the drop area element.

See the full working demo here

There's naturally a lot more code there, but it's fairly straightforward. I'm looping over the draggable boxes to add the event listeners to each one. The setData() and getData() methods are used within that loop to obtain and apply the color info.

Try dragging any of the boxes into the drop area to see the background of the drop area change. You can even try changing the HTML to use different colors (any valid CSS color value will work). As long as the color is valid, the background of the drop area element will change to that color.

And that's a basic way to use the dataTransfer object when working with the Drag and Drop API.
 

Now on to this week's tools!
 

JavaScript Utilities

Working From Home? Try Team.Video
Team.video makes it easier and faster for remote teams to work together by offering user friendly video meetings with agendas, collaborative notes, and emoji responses. No download required and it’s free to use.   via Syndicate

Van11y
Bit of an older project that I just discovered. A collection of customizable, accessible scripts for rich interface elements, built using progressive enhancement.

Rsup Progress
A simple progress bar with promises support.

Heapify
A very fast JavaScript priority queue, implemented using a binary heap, with no dependencies.

Nano Events
Simple and tiny (72 bytes) event emitter library for JavaScript.

Chardin.js
Simple overlay instructions for your apps. Kind of like those 'app tour' plugins, but just a single overlay pointing stuff out.

Serialize JavaScript
Serialize JavaScript to a superset of JSON that includes regular expressions and functions.

FullCalendar
A JavaScript calendar plugin, great for displaying events with drag-and-drop capabilities and an API for extending its functionality.

defu
Utility to recursively assign default properties.

Clack
A modern keyboard shortcut library written in Typescript.

Sharect.js
A lightweight (2.9Kb gzipped and minified) JavaScript library to let users share text selections to social networks in desktop browsers (like Medium).

Uppload
A better JavaScript image uploader. Highly customizable with 30+ plugins, open-source, and can be used with any file uploading back end.

Media Tools (SVG, Video, Audio, etc.)

Beginner JavaScript by Wes Bos is 50% Off!
The master package includes 88 HD videos, part of 15 modules – and course updates are free forever.   promoted 

mediasoup
Cutting-edge WebRTC video conferencing. The perfect choice for building multi-party video conferencing and real-time streaming apps.

gifcap
Create animated GIFs in your browser from a screen recording. Client-side only, no data is uploaded.

Tabler Icons
A set of over 400 free MIT-licensed high-quality SVG icons for you to use in your web projects. Each icon is designed on a 24x24 grid and a 2px stroke.

Video Puppet
Using a markdown file, create a video (with captions) from a chosen set of images, audio files and smaller video clips.

Exifr
The fastest and most versatile JavaScript EXIF reading library.

Seamless Pattern Generator
Create seamless, repeatable royalty free patterns for your website, or to download as SVG, JPEG or PNG.

Resoundly
Produce a podcast simply by typing the content and this app will convert it to speech.

Spline
Easily create 3D web experiences without coding. Build and iterate fast with production-ready results.

Photo Stream
Self-hosted, super simple photo stream. Built with Ruby and seems to require either Netlify or Jekyll.

Ionicons
Premium designed icons for use in web, iOS, Android, and desktop apps. Support for SVG and web font.

The Uncategorizables

Advanced React & GraphQL by Wes Bos is 50% Off!
The master package includes 68 HD videos, part of 10 modules – and course updates are free forever.   promoted 

Brim
Desktop application to efficiently search large packet captures and logs from Zeek (the network security monitoring tool).

StartNames
Produces brandable ideas for domain names in a Twitter stream, based on actual domains that are for sale.

WMS Everywhere
Chrome extension to help you research search volume, advertising cost per click, and related keywords inside Google search results – free and on-demand.

PDF.js Express
Add a PDF.js viewer with out-of-the-box annotation, PDF form fill, and signing. Based on Mozilla's PDF.js (for parsing and rendering PDFs).

AsyncAPI
Open source tools to easily build and maintain your event-driven architecture. All powered by the AsyncAPI specification, the industry standard for defining asynchronous APIs.

Weglot
Allows you to make your website multilingual in minutes and to manage all your translations effortlessly.

Our Site Updates
An easy way to post updates to your website (e.g. via easy to install banners) and keep visitors informed.

RightFont
An innovative, beautiful and professional font manager app for Mac, helping designers preview, install, sync, and manage their font files.

PingPong
Remote user interviews and user tests made simple.

Extract Article Text
Lets you easily extract boilerplate-free text from news articles, blogs, press releases, and company pages with a single API request.

Commerce
Drop‑in e‑commerce for any website with a single line of code. Serverless, real‑time, and API‑first.

A Tweet for Thought

Send Me Your Tools!

Made something? Send links via Direct Message on Twitter @WebToolsWeekly (details here). No tutorials or articles, please. If you have any suggestions for improvement or corrections, feel free to reply to this email.
 

Before I Go...

This is amazing: Open and Shut lets you send messages in Morse code by repeatedly slamming your laptop shut. So if you've been kidnapped and forced to give up all your passwords or something...?

Thanks to everyone for subscribing and reading!

Keep tooling,
Louis
webtoolsweekly.com
@WebToolsWeekly
PayPal.me/WebToolsWeekly