Over the last two weeks I've taken a self-administered crash course in learning more about how to make web sites with components that can be dragged and dropped in order to achieve a whole new way to offer cool functionality.

Much of this work has been on my game, but some at work as well has resulted in some very cool interface operability. The basis for these features is a JavaScript library called Scriptaculous. I can see why.

In my game, for example, a player can click a ship's icon and move it from one task force to another. Likewise, icons of planes can be clicked and dragged to arm them, launch them, etc. What before took an entire page reload to achieve such little things now happens practically invisibly and with much, much less interference of the action and no interruption of the player.

At work I've used this to move individually listed titles of videos into a playlist. The playlist determines a starting time and ending time for each item it holds. If the new title lands in a gap between scheduled items then it fills in the gap. If it lands on a scheduled item then the new item replaces the old one. Another area is provided for items to be dragged out of the schedule in order to remove them.

With some more experience I'll become fluent in these processes instead of just competent, but this "Web 2.0" technology's really the cool thing.