Brian Grinstead

I wrote an article, Make Table Rows Sortable Using jQuery UI Sortable on the Foliotek Development Blog about a problem that I ran into when trying to set up a basic sortable table using jQuery UI. The columns would collapse down once the dragging began.

This was fixed by adjusting the helper object for the sortable function. Check out the [article][] for all the details, but here is a sample of the code if you are just looking for the solution:

// Return a helper with preserved width of cells
var fixHelper = function(e, ui) {
	ui.children().each(function() {
		$(this).width($(this).width());
	});
	return ui;
};
 
$("#sort tbody").sortable({
	helper: fixHelper
}).disableSelection();

One thing that has always been annoying about programming JavaScript in an ASP.NET Web Forms environment is that the ID attribute of HTML controls rendered out from ASP controls is unpredictable.

	<asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtPhoneNumber" />

renders out as something like:

	<input type="text" id="ctl00_ctl00_ctl00_main_Content_txtPhoneNumber" 
		name="ctl00$ctl00$ctl00$main$Content$txtPhoneNumber" />

I did a write up over on the LANIT development blog about a solution to this problem using jQuery.

Check out the post for more details, but here is the function:

	jQuery.expr[':'].asp = function(elem, i, match) {
		return (elem.id && elem.id.match(match[3] + "$"));
	};
 
	$(":asp(txtPhoneNumber)").keyup(...);