I’m developing an application that will randomize a list of words, and display them to the user. The user will then be able to drag the box containing each word over a Cartesian plane, and drop it anywhere they like. They will also be able to link various words together on the same plane. Once a user has completed these tasks, I want to update a database with that user’s data – the coordinates of each word, as well as any parent words that may exist for each word.
I started developing the application in Flex, but I’m running into problems integrating the data manipulation. It might just be me, but I find the way Flex is structured to be very counter-intuitive. I’m playing around with shifting the project over to perhaps a JQuery build.
I’m proficient in neither JQuery nor Flex, however, and I’m not sure which one will be easier to pick up and develop a working prototype with.
Any thoughts?
Well, you start here a bit with the Flash vs HTML5 war.
You could use HTML/Javascript.
jQuery UI has functionality for drag and drop. Head over to the demos to see some demos and instructions on how to implement it.
Positioning is nicely build in jQuery and has a nice library in jQueryUI: http://jqueryui.com/demos/position/
I hope those are enough starters to get you building your first prototype.