Drag and Drop components in the Design section

[mjashanks]

We get asked a lot if we can allow dragging and dropping components into screens.

There is one big reason why we have not tackled this yet - Responsive Design.

We want Budibase to work well across Desktop, Mobile and Tablet - this is something that we are working on right now.

The issue that DnD causes for responsive apps, is that it encourages "Absolute Positioning", which just does not work for differing screen sizes. We have ideas around this, but there are a few things that we need to put in place before we can layer DnD on top.

1. Our new Section component (now released) makes it much easier to build layouts. It comes with predefined layouts, (e.g. 2 column, 3 column), that are responsive by default and mean that you don't have to fiddle about with flex
2. Simplified design panel. We currently have a huge amount of options in our design panel - many of which are not used, or are not relevant for a given component. We are working on this now. This will make Budibase design much simpler and easier to use.
3. Responsive design. The ability to preview your app in different screen sizes.
4. Conditional UI. This will give us the ability to set component properties, based on current app data / state. One of the conditions that will be available will be "Screen Size"

All of these features together will improve the usability of the design section, and allow us to create real, responsive apps - something that most other platforms fail at.

Only then can we consider how we might put DnD on top of this - if it's really still a benefit.

@oswaldB - tagging you, because you recently raised this question with us :)