designMode

By  on  

Every once in a while I stumble upon an API or browser setting that I can't believe ever existed. Such examples can be seen in the numerous String.prototype properties such as bold, italics, and even blink, which wrap given string text in their representative HTML tags. Bizarre.

It was recently brought to my attention the document.designMode API: an on|off switch that acts almost like a contentEdible attribute for the entire document. You can toggle designMode by simply changing the setting:

document.designMode = "on";

With the designMode setting on, you can edit page text, drag and drop assets, and generally cause chaos on the page. This is really nice for prototyping; I'd have loved to have known about this while doing client work.

While I see uses for this API, it does feel a bit bizarre. I'd have liked to have known the origins of this property and its use cases. Have ideas about how you'd use it? Share!

Recent Features

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Facebook Sliders With Mootools and CSS

    One of the great parts of being a developer that uses Facebook is that I can get some great ideas for progressive website enhancement. Facebook incorporates many advanced JavaScript and AJAX features: photo loads by left and right arrow, dropdown menus, modal windows, and...

  • By
    MooTools Window Object Dumping

    Ever want to see all of the information stored within the window property of your browser? Here's your chance. The XHTML We need a wrapper DIV that we'll consider a console. The CSS I like making this look like a command-line console. The MooTools JavaScript Depending on what you have loaded...

Discussion

  1. Hi David,

    thanks for the trigger!
    We digged deeper and unveiled the origin: https://twitter.com/slicknet/status/1180862121371811840

    That was fun :-D

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!