Hi there, wondering if anyone is able to help me.

I am making a piece of software (for a uni project not for profit) and I have pretty good knowledge of Java but not Javascript.

For this project I wish to create an interface that looks like igoogle.com but not with any of the functionality as I will explain.

The idea is to have 3 dragable, snapable, columns which can contain several containers of the same width but varying height. In these objects I want to be able to contain individual objects which have the option of being dragged internally to sort them but also be dragged as a "ghost" (http://demos111.mootools.net/Drag.Cart) into an alternative container which can be exported to a plan. This isnt what im worrying about at this stage but just to give some background on the type of container I need to create.

So basically just need to create a frame work, with a title bar at the top, which contains 3 columns with the ability to add a container of a certain type (there will be 3 type, one for the central list, one for editing an objects content, and one for containing a list of objects - there may be multiple of the 3rd type but only one of the first two) and make it dragable around the page and will snap-to when released.

I realise this has been a little rambly and I apologise for that but basically as I stated at the top require similar look and feel to igoogle if this makes it clearer and I have also created 3 Images to explain how I see a drag happening, images are labeled 1 to 3 and are chronological.

Any help on how to get started with the framework would be greatly appreciated, I have found many sites which seem to be able to offer help with the objects and wish to have a crack at this independently (unless someone wants to be very generous with their time ) but just want to construct a good framework - ultimately I will be using PHP with the objects and also exporting a version of the contents to an XML file in case this impacts upon the choices, I believe AJAX might be useful but not sure of its implementation.