ASP.NET Web Parts: Drag and Drop Support in Non-IE Browsers

Question

I have been using web parts on my site since ASP.NET 2.0 came out. Dragging and dropping web parts works great in Internet Explorer, but it doesn't work at all in Firefox, Chrome, or Safari. I recently upgraded the site to ASP.NET 3.5 SP1, but I am still unable to drag and drop web parts in non-IE browsers.

How can I enable drag and drop web parts in these other browsers?

Update (2/9/2010):

This mentions this problem, but offers no solution: http://forums.asp.net/t/1294857.aspx

Update (2/19/2010):

These posts offer a possible solution, but I have been unable to get it working yet on my site:

• http://forums.asp.net/p/1451292/3319836.aspx
• http://waitink.blogspot.com/2008/10/ajax-web-parts-part-3-dynamic-web-parts.html

In short, these say the drag and drop problem was solved in "ASP.NET Futures (July 2007 release)" but for some crazy reason, was left out of ASP.NET 3.5 SP1. So to solve, you have to download the Futures release at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=A5189BCB-EF81-4C12-9733-E294D13A58E6&displaylang=en

Then, you need to use the WebPartManager and WebPartZone from the Microsoft.Web.Preview.UI.Controls.WebParts namespace.

Answer 1

You must be using a very old version of "Atlas", because they fixed this quite a while ago (after beta 1).

Answer 2

This might look like a silly question but, if you add the following HTML code to your page:

<div style="background-color: red; padding: 50px; width: 100px;">&nbsp;</div>
<div style="background-color: green; width: 100px;">&nbsp;</div>

Is the red box twice as big as the green one?

If it isn't, you have an incorrect DOCTYPE that's causing the browsers to render the page in Quirks Mode, basically ending any hope you might have of it working across browsers.

If the size of the boxes is correct, do you get any error messages in the Firebug console when you try to drag and drop in Firefox?

And as a last two comments related to the others answers:

1. If you can, I also recommend you to avoid asp.net ajax and use jQuery instead. You'll find much more info around the web, and it's much better documented IMO.
2. Check the references in your project to verify that you really are using the latest version of ASP.Net Ajax. Even if your computer has the latest version of ASP.Net, your project might reference an older dll included in your bin directory (It happened to me once, so I should know!)