All of the events are needed because developers need that granular control. If you want simple, you're going to have to use a library, what you're basically as

All of the events are needed because developers need that granular control. If you want simple, you're going to have to use a library, what you're basically asking for is for the HTML5 spec to emulate jQuery and cut out the options that you specifically don't need, which isn't reasonable. http://www.html5tuts.co.uk/demos/drag/ http://www.html5tuts.co.uk/demos/drag/ Here is a very cool dragging demo using jQuery: http://threedubmedia.com/demo/drag/ http://threedubmedia.com/demo/drag/ If you have a solution to the HTML5 spec to simplify it then please write an article and we'll support it if it's reasonable and do our best to get it added to the spec (it won't be implemented into browsers for a few years though). Remember you have to support lots of use-cases, touchscreens, old browser support (unfortunate reality). The only real complaint in the original linked-to article is about having too many events (they're not all required to be used), then it says that you have to add some CSS for it to work properly in Safari (sounds like Safari's problem, not the HTML5 spec's fault).