My site is a private family & community site. My members range from ages 8 to 80. Some are computing wizards, many are not. As such, for those members who aren't experts, I've placed 'How to Add' boxes in Column 2 of every 'add_post' (and 'parent' and 'category') page - complete with field-by-field instructions on how to 'add' something (and what each field means in its overall context).

The 'How to Add' boxes in cloumn 2 are quite lengthy - much longer than the 'Add' page. I use a 'collapsible box' to keep the page tidy.

Having discovered the 'draggable box' code, each collapsible box is now also 'draggable' to anywhere on the page to ensure that my members can position their 'How to Add' instructions alongside the appropriate field/s on the 'Add' page.

Easy to do and extremely useful for your less experienced users/members. Both types of boxes (collapsible and draggable) are better explained in the iWiccle Demo site.

Hope this helps someone.

Hi John; that's great to hear! I especially appreciate the idea of your going out of your way to improve usability for everyone and accommodate their specific needs. I can see how the collapsible unit comes in handy for such purposes!

Hearing what you used it for gives me a further thought on extending the draggable unit deal. At one point when I get a moment to look at it, I'll add in an option where the drag positions become sticky on a per-page and per-user basis, so your site users can drag any one of those boxes to a location of their preference, and find it in the same place the next time they log in.

Do you think that'd be a useful extension to the concept? I could do it either using a cookie, in which case there wouldn't be any database record of it, and it would be tied with their browser (much like the resizable TinyMCE editor does it), or otherwise have it set to save it to the database and make it stick regardless of where they log in from. It would of course have to go with a "reset position" button so the user can normalize the positions whenever required.

We have lots of stuff somewhere deep in the system that could be used in ways like this. Someone just needs to get the idea and put it into practice; the technology support is in most cases already there, or a short extension away.