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

  • By
    Create a CSS Cube

    CSS cubes really showcase what CSS has become over the years, evolving from simple color and dimension directives to a language capable of creating deep, creative visuals.  Add animation and you've got something really neat.  Unfortunately each CSS cube tutorial I've read is a bit...

  • By
    Create Namespaced Classes with MooTools

    MooTools has always gotten a bit of grief for not inherently using and standardizing namespaced-based JavaScript classes like the Dojo Toolkit does.  Many developers create their classes as globals which is generally frowned up.  I mostly disagree with that stance, but each to their own.  In any event...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Introducing MooTools Templated

    One major problem with creating UI components with the MooTools JavaScript framework is that there isn't a great way of allowing customization of template and ease of node creation. As of today, there are two ways of creating: new Element Madness The first way to create UI-driven...

  • By
    Build a Slick and Simple MooTools Accordion

    Last week I covered a smooth, subtle MooTools effect called Kwicks. Another great MooTools creation is the Accordion, which acts like...wait for it...an accordion! Now I've never been a huge Weird Al fan so this is as close to playing an accordion as...

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!