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June 19, 2021 07:42 pm GMT

Creating a Kanban Board with HTML, CSS & JavaScript

In this article, we are building a Kanban Board with plain HTML, CSS & JavaScript. This article aims to show, how the modern UX designs and functionality can also be achieved with much simpler elements of HTML, CSS & JavaScript. This is where it all started right!

What is Kanban Board? Why use it?

Kanban is a project management tool, used by many software development teams, working with agile processes.

It was designed to help visualize work, reduce work in progress tasks and maximize efficiency of teams.

Kanban uses visual cards, columns and continuous improvement ideology to help teams achieve goals.

"Kanban" is the Japanese word for "visual signal." If you work in services or technology, your work is often times invisible and intangible. A kanban board helps make your work visible so you can show it to others and keep everyone on the same page.

Let's Start

Kanban Board, which we are going to build, should eventually look like this

And we must be able to move tasks like this

Initial Folder Structure

HTML

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the most basic building block of the Web. It defines the meaning and structure of web content.

Iteration 1

Initial HTML Boilerplate & Skeleton for kanban.html

<!DOCTYPE html><html lang="en"><head>    <title>Kanban Board</title></head><body>    <div class="container">        <div class="kanban-heading">            <strong class="kanban-heading-text">Kanban Board</strong>        </div>        <div class="kanban-board">            <div id="todo">To Do</div>            <div id="inprogress">In Progress</div>            <div id="done">Done</div>        </div>    </div></body></html>

Output

Iteration 2

Adding properties to HTML for working better with CSS later. Which means CSS can identify HTML better with these properties.

kanban.html

<body>    <div class="container">        <div class="kanban-heading">            <strong class="kanban-heading-text">Kanban Board</strong>        </div>        <div class="kanban-board">            <div class="kanban-block" id="todo">                <strong>To Do</strong>            </div>            <div class="kanban-block" id="inprogress">                <strong>In Progress</strong>            </div>            <div class="kanban-block" id="done">                <strong>Done</strong>            </div>        </div>    </div></body>

Output

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets is used to format & style, layout of a page

Iteration 3

Link CSS to kanban.html

<head>    <link rel="stylesheet" href="./kanban.css">    <title>Kanban Board</title></head>

Iteration 4

Adding CSS to kanban.css

Container & Head

.container {  width: 70%;  min-width: 50%;  margin: auto;  display: flex;  flex-direction: column;}.kanban-heading {  display: flex;  flex-direction: row;  justify-content: center;  font-family: sans-serif;}.kanban-heading-text {  font-size: 1.8rem;  background-color: tomato;  padding: 0.8rem 1.7rem;  border-radius: 0.5rem;  margin: 1rem;}

Output

Board sections

.kanban-board {  display: flex;  flex-direction: row;  justify-content: space-between;  font-family: sans-serif;}.kanban-block {  padding: 0.6rem;  width: 30.5%;  min-width: 14rem;  min-height: 4.5rem;  border-radius: 0.3rem;}#todo {  background-color: #fec6d1;}#inprogress {  background-color: #ffaf00;}#done {  background-color: #018b01;}

Output

Body

body {  background-color: black;}

Output

As we see now, output is much better after adding the magic of CSS to it.

Let's now complete the remaining part of adding sample tasks and it's styling to the Kanban Board

HTML

Iteration 5

Adding sample tasks to "To Do" section
kanban.html

<div class="kanban-block" id="todo">    <strong>To Do</strong>    <div class="task-button-block">        <button id="task-button">Create new task</span>    </div>    <div class="task" id="task1">        <span>Task 1</span>    </div>    <div class="task" id="task2">        <span>Task 2</span>    </div>    <div class="task" id="task3">        <span>Task 3</span>    </div>    <div class="task" id="task4">        <span>Task 4</span>    </div>    <div class="task" id="task5">        <span>Task 5</span>    </div>    <div class="task" id="task6">        <span>Task 6</span>    </div></div>

Iteration 6

Adding styles for sample tasks to kanban.css

.task {  background-color: white;  margin: 0.2rem 0rem 0.3rem 0rem;  border: 0.1rem solid black;  border-radius: 0.2rem;  padding: 0.5rem 0.2rem 0.5rem 2rem;}#task-button {  margin: 0.2rem 0rem 0.1rem 0rem;  background-color: white;  border-radius: 0.2rem;  width: 100%;  border: 0.25rem solid black;  padding: 0.5rem 2.7rem;  border-radius: 0.3rem;  font-size: 1rem;}

Output

As we can see, with a structured HTML & CSS it only gets better

Javascript

JavaScript is a scripting or programming language that allows you to implement complex features on web pages

Time for some actions.

In our Kanban Board, I want to drap and drop my tasks from "To Do" to "In Progress" and "In Progress" to "Done" Status.

For this I am going to use the HTML Drag & Drop API,

HTML Drag and Drop interfaces enable applications to use drag-and-drop features in browsers. The user may select draggable elements with a mouse, drag those elements to a droppable element, and drop them by releasing the mouse button.

Let me show you all code & deduce it step by step.

<!DOCTYPE html><html lang="en"><head>    <link rel="stylesheet" href="./kanban.css">    <title>Kanban Board</title>    <script>        function drag(ev) {            ev.dataTransfer.setData("text", ev.target.id);        }        function allowDrop(ev) {            ev.preventDefault();        }        function drop(ev) {            ev.preventDefault();            var data = ev.dataTransfer.getData("text");            ev.target.appendChild(document.getElementById(data));        }    </script></head><body>    <div class="container">        <div class="kanban-heading">            <strong class="kanban-heading-text">Kanban Board</strong>        </div>        <div class="kanban-board">            <div class="kanban-block" id="todo" ondrop="drop(event)" ondragover="allowDrop(event)">                <strong>To Do</strong>                <div class="task-button-block">                    <button id="task-button">Create new task</span>                </div>                <div class="task" id="task1" draggable="true" ondragstart="drag(event)">                    <span>Task 1</span>                </div>                <div class="task" id="task2" draggable="true" ondragstart="drag(event)">                    <span>Task 2</span>                </div>                <div class="task" id="task3" draggable="true" ondragstart="drag(event)">                    <span>Task 3</span>                </div>                <div class="task" id="task4" draggable="true" ondragstart="drag(event)">                    <span>Task 4</span>                </div>                <div class="task" id="task5" draggable="true" ondragstart="drag(event)">                    <span>Task 5</span>                </div>                <div class="task" id="task6" draggable="true" ondragstart="drag(event)">                    <span>Task 6</span>                </div>            </div>            <div class="kanban-block" id="inprogress" ondrop="drop(event)" ondragover="allowDrop(event)">                <strong>In Progress</strong>            </div>            <div class="kanban-block" id="done" ondrop="drop(event)" ondragover="allowDrop(event)">                <strong>Done</strong>            </div>        </div>    </div></body></html>

Using draggable="true" property, we are identifying, what is draggable element
Using ondragstart="drag(event)", we are mentioning what method to use, when the element is dragged.
With following function call, we are defining what data needs to be dragged, in our case it's the HTML element.

function drag(ev) {        ev.dataTransfer.setData("text", ev.target.id);}

ondrop="drop(event)" specifies when data is dropped, a drop event occurs and we call drop method
This function sets data to target element

function drop(ev) {        ev.preventDefault();        var data = ev.dataTransfer.getData("text");        ev.target.appendChild(document.getElementById(data));}

Output