JQuery Draggable and Resizeable over IFrames (Solution)

Question

I recently ran into some troubles using JQuery Draggable and Resizable plugins. Looking for solutions, i found some very fragmented code in many different places and finally filed down to a clean solution which seems to work almost perfectly for me.

I thought i'd share my findings for anyone else, should they come accross this issue too.

I have a div which contains and IFrame. This div must be resizeable and draggable. Simple enough - add the jquery draggable and resizable to the div like so:

$("#Div").draggable();
$("#Div").resizable();

All is fine until you drag over another div containing an iframe or try to resize your current div, by moving over your current iframe. Both functions stop when over an iframe.

Solution:

$("#Div").draggable({
    start: function () {
        $(".AllContainerDivs").each(function (index, element) {
        var d = $('<div class="iframeCover" style="zindex:99;position:absolute;width:100%;top:0px;left:0px;height:' + $(element).height() + 'px"></div>');
        $(element).append(d);});
    },
    stop: function () {
        $('.iframeCover').remove();
    }
});



$("#Div").resizable({
    start: function () {
        $(".AllContainerDivs").each(function (index, element) {
            var d = $('<div class="iframeCover" style="z-index:99;position:absolute;width:100%;top:0px;left:0px;height:' + $(element).height() + 'px"></div>');
            $(element).append(d);
        });
    },
    stop: function () {
        $('.iframeCover').remove();
    }
});

Enjoy!

PS: Some extra code to create windows which, when selected, are brought to the front of the other draggables:

In the draggable start function -

var maxZ = 1;
$(".AllContainerDivs").each(function (index, element) {
    if ($(element).css("z-index") > maxZ) {
        maxZ = $(element).css("z-index");
    }
});
$(this).css("z-index", maxZ + 1);

Solution 1

There are a number of ways to achieve this, all depending on your needs. I found resizing/dragging many windows slows the UI down a lot, and as such I ended up hiding the iframes on start of resize/Drag with a border to help navigation.

There are some jquery plugins that achieve part of this functionality, but many struggle with iframes.

The bring to front can also be improved at points and may not work in all situations.

Solution 2

Try this:

 $('#Div').draggable({ iframeFix: true });

This should work.

Solution 3

What I've done is define body.dragging iframe {pointer-events: none;} then add dragging class to body on dragstart event and remove it on dragend event.

Works fine for me, not sure why it wasn't mentioned before, as far as I can tell pointer-events CSS property was already around in 2010.

Solution 4

I first also went like Byron Cobb's solution, but as I'm using a dialog element and the Iframe isn't needed when the dialog is shown (it's a saving dialog), I liked using the modal option:

$('#savingDialog').dialog({
    modal: true
});

Solution 5

Why so hard? There is much more beautiful solution:

• put your iframe inside relative div with some z-index, say 0
• make iframe relative also and change it's z-index to -1 during dragging:

code:

$("#Div").draggable({
    start: function () {
        $("iframe").css('z-index', '-1');
    },
    stop: function () {
        $("iframe").css('z-index', '0');
    }
});

View more solutions

Comments

[Bob]

This was the first thing I tried and it fails under multiple conditions, I'm not sure why, because essentially its the same thing I've implemented.

[im_brian_d]

Actually it disabled links within the draggable element for some reason, ended up doing this instead: stackoverflow.com/a/5646590/1342440

[Grimeh]

This worked perfectly for me, a simple call to $('iframe').toggle() on start and stop (see the other answers for examples on setting those callbacks) is all that's needed.

[geevee]

try to understand my feeling when i struggled with this bug for an hour and finally i found this solution, iframeFix: true - how obvious. saved my day. thanks!