Shapeshift v2.0

Check out a demo here.

April 16th, 2013: Version 2.0 released. There may be bugs and we are still browser testing. Please report any bugs you find through issues.

Column Grid System + Drag and Drop

Inspired heavily by the jQuery Masonry plugin, Shapeshift is a plugin which will dynamically arrange a collection of elements into a column grid system similar to Pinterest. What sets it apart is the ability to drag and drop items within the grid while still maintaining a logical index position for each item. This allows for the grid to be rendered exactly the same every time Shapeshift is used, as long as the child elements are in the correct order.

Features

• Drag and Drop Rearrange items within a container or even drag items between multiple Shapeshift enabled containers. Dragging elements around will physically change their index position within their parent container. When a page reloads, as long as the child elements are placed in the correct order then the grid will look exactly the same.

• Works on Touch Devices Shapeshift uses jQuery UI Draggable/Droppable for help with the drag and drop system. Luckily there is already a plugin called jQuery Touch Punch which provides touch support for jQuery UI D/D. It can be found in the vendor folder.

• Multiwidth Elements A new feature in 2.0 is the ability to add elements that can span across multiple columns as long as their width is correctly set through CSS.

• Responsive Grid Enabled by default, Shapeshift will listen for window resize events and arrange the elements within it according to the space provided by their parent container.

Credits

A big thanks to all of our contributors!

Shapeshift is maintained by We The Media, inc.

Sites Using Shapeshift

Got a project that you are using shapeshift on? Let us know and we will happily throw a link to your page here!

Index

1. Getting Started

• Dependencies
• Setting up the Parent Container
• Setting up the Child Elements
• Multiwidth Elements

2. Shapeshift Options

• The Basics
• Extra Features
• Grid Properties
• Animation Settings
• Drag and Drop Settings
• Customize CSS

3. Detecting Changes

• Event Listening Examples

4. Triggering a Rearrange
5. Destroying Shapeshift
6. For Contributors

Getting Started

Dependencies

Shapeshift requires the latest version of jQuery, and drag and drop feature (enabled by default) requires jQuery UI Draggable/Droppable libraries. It also requires jQuery Touch Punch to work on touch devices.

Setting Up the Parent Container

Shapeshift arranges child elements by absolutely positioning them in their parent container which must be set to "position: relative". The container does not have to be a div and can be substituted for any element that can have child elements, such as an unordered list. The container also must have a width specified.

HTML:

<div class="container"></div>

CSS:

.container {
  position: relative;
  width: 100%;
}

Setting up the Child Elements

By default all child elements within the parent container will be Shapeshifted. Just make sure that they are set to "position: absolute" in your CSS file. The children also must have a height/width specified.

HTML:

<div class="container">
  <div>Child Element 1</div>
  <div>Child Element 2</div>
  <div>Child Element 3</div>
  <div>Child Element 4</div>
  ...
</div>

CSS:

.container {
  position: relative;
  width: 100%;
}

.container div {
  height: 50px;
  position: absolute;
  width: 50px;
}

Multiwidth Children

Shapeshift relies on a column grid system, this means that every time Shapeshift is initialized on a container it will determine the column width based on the width of the first child in that container. If no column width is specified on a child element then Shapeshift will assume it will use it to set the single column width for the grid.

To make a child element multiwidth, simply add the data attribute "data-ss-colspan=X", where X is the amount of columns it should span. Shapeshift does not automatically set their width though so the childs width must already be set to the correct width. The calculated width must be set to: "single column width * columns to span + the gutter space in between".

For example, assuming the default gutter value of 10px, multiwidth elements can be created as such:

HTML:

<div class="container">
  <div>Spans 1 Column</div>
  <div data-ss-colspan="2">Spans 2 Columns</div>
  <div data-ss-colspan="3">Spans 3 Columns</div>
  <div data-ss-colspan="4">Spans 4 Columns</div>
  ...
</div>

CSS:

.container {
  position: relative;
  width: 100%;
}

.container div {
  height: 120px; 
  position: absolute; 
  width: 80px;
}
.container div[data-ss-colspan="2"] { width: 170px; }
.container div[data-ss-colspan="3"] { width: 260px; }
.container div[data-ss-colspan="4"] { width: 350px; }

Shapeshift Everything!

Now that we have our setup complete, simply call .shapeshift() on the parent element. It will, by default, select all the children in the parent element to be rearranged.

$('.container').shapeshift();

Options

Shapeshift Options

Customize your grid even further. All of these are the default options and more in depth information can be found further down the page.

$('.container').shapeshift
    # The Basics
    selector: "*"

    # Features
    enableDrag: true
    enableCrossDrop: true
    enableResize: true
    enableTrash: false

    # Grid Properties
    align: "center"
    colWidth: null
    columns: null
    minColumns: 1
    autoHeight: true
    maxHeight: null
    minHeight: 100
    gutterX: 10
    gutterY: 10
    paddingX: 10
    paddingY: 10

    # Animation
    animated: true
    animateOnInit: false
    animationSpeed: 225
    animationThreshold: 100

    # Drag/Drop Options
    dragClone: false
    deleteClone: true
    dragRate: 100
    dragWhitelist: "*"
    crossDropWhitelist: "*"
    cutoffStart: null
    cutoffEnd: null
    handle: false

    # Customize CSS
    cloneClass: "ss-cloned-child"
    activeClass: "ss-active-child"
    draggedClass: "ss-dragged-child"
    placeholderClass: "ss-placeholder-child"
    originalContainerClass: "ss-original-container"
    currentContainerClass: "ss-current-container"
    previousContainerClass: "ss-previous-container"

The Basics

Extra Features

Grid Properties

Animation Settings

Drag and Drop Settings

Customize CSS

Certain elements will have CSS classes attached to them for specific events. Customize those CSS classes if needed.

Detecting Changes

Changes to the grid will trigger several different events on the container element and important objects will be returned with it. Here are a list of events that can be listened to, with some examples following.

Event Listening Examples

When an item has begun being dragged, it will trigger the "ss-event-dragged" on the container element. You can then write out some code to be fired off when that event occurs. The object that was just selected is also passed back to you. For example,

  $containers = $(".ss-container")

  $containers.on "ss-rearranged", (e, selected) ->
    console.log "This container:", $(this)
    console.log "Has rearranged this item:", $(selected)
    console.log "Into this position:", $(selected).index()

  $containers.on "ss-removed", (e, selected) ->
    console.log "This item:", $(selected)
    console.log "Has been removed from this container:", $(this)

  $containers.on "ss-added", (e, selected) ->
    console.log "This item:", $(selected)
    console.log "Has been added to this container:", $(this)

  $containers.on "ss-trashed", (e, selected) ->
    console.log "This item:", $(selected)
    console.log "Has been removed from the DOM"

  $containers.on "ss-drop-complete", (e) ->
    console.log "This container:", $(this)
    console.log "Has finished rearrangement after a drop."

  $containers.on "ss-arranged", (e) ->
    console.log "This container:", $(this)
    console.log "Has just rearranged items but no drop has occurred."

Triggering a Rearrange

If you add, remove, hide, or show elements through your own code then you may need to rearrange the items into their new positions. Triggering "ss-rearrange" on the target container will do so.

  $(".ss-container").trigger("ss-rearrange")

Destroying Shapeshift

Simply trigger the event "ss-destroy" on the container.

  $(".ss-container").trigger("ss-destroy")

For Contributors

Feel like you've got an idea on how to optimize the code and want to share it? We are totally open to new changes, however this is one of the first publically available plugins that I am offering and therefore do not have an exact process on pull requests. Feel free to fork the project all you want, but be aware any pull requests that are made may take a while to get implemented (if at all).