Ployfills and Android Drag and Drop Issues
Sunday, February 11th 2024
Sorry I've been missing in action lately. The holidays and other things have kept me busy. But that doesn't mean I haven't been programing. I've actually been doing a lot of web/javascript development lately on personal projects. One of those projects has been building my own version of a web based solitaire with drag and drop support. While dealing with that, I learned a few things along the way. Today I thought I'd share what I learned in this process.
What's a polyfil?A polyfil is a piece of code that extends the capabilities of a browser. Say for example, an older version of a browser doesn't support a niffy new HTML5 thing. You could write a "polyfil" and provide support for the missing feature. In my case I'm building a web application that depends on drag and drop. Well not all browsers, especially mobile browsers don't support this feature. The case that surprised me the most, was a fairly recent version of Chrome for Android. Seems odd in 2024, but that's the state of things. So what do you do?
The SolutionWell in my case after a lot of Googling, I found a library/polyfil to do the job. So introducing dragdroptouch by Bernardo-Castilho. This library adds support for a lot of older browsers as well as mobile browsers that nativity don't support drag and drop. For example some recent versions of Chrome on Android do not support this common feature. All I had to do was just include Bendardo's polyfil and off to the races. Problem solved. I can now drag and drop cards and all is right with the world.
I hope this helps someone else who was struggling to find this solution. That's a big part of why I share this on my blog. Hopefully, I'll have my project complete soon and ya'll can enjoy that. Till next time, happy programming.
Categories: Development
Tags: development, javascript