What is drag-and-drop block editing?

With drag-and-drop users can move and shuffle paragraphs, headings, and images within the editor.

Click-and-drag block editing makes the process fluid and enjoyable — like playing with the blocks as a kid. And enjoyable products mean better user satisfaction and retention rates for business.

The drag-and-drop feature first appeared in Xerox’s Graphic User Interfaces in the 1970s. While this term applies to many use cases, like moving files between folders, tabs, and objects in visual editors, we focus on feature functionality for textual content operations.

Does your app need drag-and-drop?

This seemingly "no-brainer" feature skyrockets the user experience. Apps for content creation, project management, publishing, mind mapping, and editing win big from it. Why? Because they need visual organization and layout customization.

When it comes to text editing, drag-and-drop saves the editor the whole cut-and-paste hassle and is simply easier when you need to shuffle sentence parts or even paragraphs.

Higher content quality

The easy changes and improvements result in more polished text.

Better product perception

Effortless editing means happy users who stick around.

Increased productivity

Faster content re-arrangement means less time on edits.

Competitive edge

Users seeking efficiency expect the drag-and-drop function.

Smooth process

An intuitive move-around setup means frustration-free users.

Drag-and-drop use cases: as seen in your favorite products

Content editors love drag-and-drop. It's the shortcut to a shiny, polished flow, whatever the content. Besides, it's so satisfying to see blocks plopping into the right places.

No wonder all the prominent players have this tool in one form or another. Users love this feature for easy layout making, swift project management, and building better forms and websites in less time, and more.

Medium

Category: Publishing platform

Medium is a popular blogging platform with a block-based, visually driven approach. It uses drag-and-drop to reorder paragraphs, images, and other content elements within an article. Thus, a writer can enhance the flow of their post by dragging a part up or down the document or moving an image to a more impactful position.

Notion

Category: Productivity tool

The productivity platform, Notion, popularized block editing for everything. Users can move almost any element and make a custom dashboard in a breeze. Dragging rows in a table, moving blocks on a page, nesting elements inside toggles—all these features made Notion a true crowd-pleaser.

WordPress Gutenberg

Category: Content editor

Gutenberg embraced a block-based structure and made drag-and-drop a central part of its revolutionary UI. Writers love it because you can arrange your thoughts without switching to different editors. Webmasters love it because you can easily tweak and update content arrangements. Win-win!

Tally

Category: Form builder

By treating form elements as blocks, Tally makes the process more natural and easier for non-technical users. Flexibility lets users design personalized forms even with zero design skills. Drag-and-drop makes the prototyping process faster and simpler. Iterations and adjustments take no time—something that their clients love.

Drag-and-drop fastens the editing process, letting users sculpt their content. It reduces the back-and-forth in rearranging blocks and keeps the creative flow uninterrupted. Effortless content restructuring contributes to an engaging and satisfying user experience.

Myron Mavko

Co-Founder & CEO, Flexum

When do you not need the custom drag-and-drop functionality?

No multi-column layouts, no tables

If your product has no custom elements or complex layouts, you can rightfully skip drag-and-drop.

Basic text-viewing apps

The need for drag-and-drop would be meaningless for a read-only document viewer or a simple chat client.

Alternative interactions

In some setups, rearranging items with up/down arrows can work just as well.

Limited text input

Wherever users write less than a paragraph, drag-and-drop doesn’t make sense.

Think if target users will benefit from the feature. If the text volume in the editor is insignificant, drag-and-drop will be a burden for UI and a nuisance for the user. Also, if your app implies the usage of devices with ineffective touch interaction, it might be redundant.

Anton Chuiko

Co-Founder & COO, Flexum

Drag-and-drop in Flexum projects

Distribute

We at Flexum use leading frameworks to craft custom integrated solutions with a drag-and-drop feature. These include Tiptap, CKEditor 5, ProseMirror, Slate, and others.

Read Distribute case study

When we built drag-and-drop into Distribute, we wanted to make things super simple for our users. Instead of complicated layouts, you can now just grab blocks and move them around. For example, drag-and-drop allows you to move the content between columns or create columns by dragging content. For Distribute, it allowed for the easy creation of the basic landings.

Natalia Donchenko

Product Designer, Flexum

Ready to add drag-and-drop to your writing app?

Both advanced and layman users expect drag-and-drop features as a part of the user experience in text-centric apps. However, this functionality is not trivial to develop — and less-than-smooth functioning can annoy your customers.

Your best solution? Getting a team that knows advanced text editors like the back of their hand. Luckily, we have one with exactly this kind of experience at Flexum.

We implemented the drag-and-drop feature and many other highly tailored features for dozens of projects. It gave our team of experts the experience and the background to build new projects confidently and efficiently.

Why Flexum?

We’re here to take the complexity off your plate. With technical expertise and a solid understanding of content editing, real-time collaboration principles, and SaaS design, we create a holistic collaborative experience that makes your app a user favorite — keeping it smooth, responsive, and always a step ahead.

Fast results that users love

Interactive and collaborative features that work smoothly and efficiently.

Hassle-free integration

We handle design, migrations, and deployment — no effort is needed from your team.

Ability to focus on what matters most

Your team builds business-critical features that make your app shine while we manage the technical complexities behind editing and collaboration functionalities in your app.

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Extremely professional, willing to go the extra mile to do the right thing, and feels like part of our company.

John Evons

CEO

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Drag-and-drop block editing