Dealing with overlapping jQuery sortable lists

I ended up fixing this issue by extending the built in sortable functionality to create a fixedSortable that detects and selectively ignores hovering over lists when there’s a overlay in place. For my purposes, I just hard coded the rules, since that suited my needs/time constraints, but you should be able to make it completely generic without too much effort.

Firstly here’s the code (explanation below):

<html>
<head>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.4/jquery.min.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.8.6/jquery-ui.min.js"></script>
    <style type="text/css">
        ul { list-style-type: none; padding: 0; float: left; }
        li { margin: 5px; padding: 5px; width: 500px; border: solid 1px #F00; background-color: #FFF; }
        #overlayed { position: fixed; top: 0; background-color: #000; margin: 20px; padding: 10px; }
        #overlayed li { width: 50px; float: left; }
    </style>
    <script type="text/javascript">
        (function ($, undefined) {
            $.widget("ui.fixedSortable", $.ui.sortable, {
                _init: function () {
                    this.element.data("sortable", this.element.data("fixedSortable"));
                    return $.ui.sortable.prototype._init.apply(this, arguments);
                },
                _create:function() {
                    var result = $.ui.sortable.prototype._create.apply(this, arguments);
                    this.containerCache.sortable = this;
                    return result;
                },
                _intersectsWithPointer: function (item) {
//This line....
                    if (item.instance.element.hasClass("main-list") && this.positionAbs.top + this.offset.click.top < $(window).scrollTop() + 87) { 
                        return false;
                    }
                    return $.ui.sortable.prototype._intersectsWithPointer.apply(this, arguments);
                },
                _intersectsWith: function(containerCache) {
//Also this line....
                    if (containerCache.sortable.element.hasClass("main-list") && this.positionAbs.top + this.offset.click.top < $(window).scrollTop() + 87) {
                        return false;
                    }
                    return $.ui.sortable.prototype._intersectsWith.apply(this, arguments);
                }
            });
        })(jQuery);

        $(function() {
            $("ul").fixedSortable({ connectWith: "ul", opacity: 0.6 }).disableSelection();
        });
    </script>
</head>
<body>
<div id="overlayed"> 
    <ul>
        <li>Item X</li>
        <li>Item Y</li>
        <li>Item Z</li>
    </ul>
</div>
<br/><br/><br/><br/><br/>
<ul class="main-list" >
    <li>Item 01</li>
    <li>Item 02</li>
    <li>Item 03</li>
    <li>Item 04</li>
    <li>Item 05</li>
    <li>Item 06</li>
    <li>Item 07</li>
    <li>Item 08</li>
    <li>Item 09</li>
    <li>Item 10</li>
    <li>Item 11</li>
    <li>Item 12</li>
    <li>Item 13</li>
    <li>Item 14</li>
    <li>Item 15</li>
    <li>Item 16</li>
    <li>Item 17</li>
    <li>Item 18</li>
    <li>Item 19</li>
    <li>Item 20</li>
    <li>Item 21</li>
    <li>Item 22</li>
    <li>Item 23</li>
    <li>Item 24</li>
    <li>Item 25</li>
    <li>Item 26</li>
    <li>Item 27</li>
    <li>Item 28</li>
    <li>Item 29</li>
    <li>Item 30</li>
</ul>
</body>
</html>

If adapting this yourself, you’ll need to change the two commented lines marked above. Basically the if statements should evaluate to true (and thus return false) if the item being hovered over (item.instance.element and containerCache.sortable.element) is not the overlay and the event (this) is occurring within the bounds of the overlay. This way the main list never receives events in the location of the page where the overlay is. So in this code the main list doesn’t receive any events if they occur in the top 87 pixels of the screen, since that’s where my fixed overlay was (which is not quite accurate in this dumbed down example, but hopefully it still makes sense).

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