PPK in the BK on Mobile JavaScript
2011 April 16I recently had the pleasure of seeing a true Web pioneer give a talk on mobile JavaScript. A Touching Look Into The Future Known As Today brings Peter-Paul Koch (@ppk, creator of quirksmode.org) to Brooklyn to give an updated talk about his experience in the trenches testing JavaScript touch event support on various mobile devices. I'll attempt to distill it down to some key points.
Mouse events and touch events are blended on mobile
The three interaction modes, in the order of the most to least we know about them:
- Mouse
- Keyboard
- Touch
Event handling on the desktop is easy because the mouse and keyboard events rarely fire simultaneously. But with the advent of touch-screen devices, both touch and mouse events fire, a conscious decision to allow mobile users to browse the countless existing sites relying on mouse events for interaction.
If you want to make a distinction:
// desktop
element.onmousedown = dostuff;
// touch
element.ontouchstart = function() {
dostuff();
element.onmousedown = null;
};
Apple has finally fit a multitouch interface into the 6th generation iPod Nano. In order to cram that into the diminutive form factor, users give up a few features such as video recording, playback, and the orientation sensor. Dropping the sensor seems logical now; the device is so small that orientation loses its meaning, and with a 1:1 aspect ratio there's no potential for a better fit for the on-screen content. I love the new approach of actually rotating the screen with your fingers, in the event you actually need to (assuming that would be due to the way it's clipped to you). There's a great