Hybrid PC/Tablet website - javascript

What is the reliable approach to develop a website that is used on the computer that is a hybrid, in other words have both a mouse (or a touch pad) and a touch screen and can be used by a user in both ways at the same time.
Especially the question is how to deal with the mouse cursor, that must be seen when using a mouse and is distracting once the user uses her finger.
The goal is to develop a single page, not two separate pages, one for mouse and other for the touch. Style cursor = 'none' is killing the cursor over the specified elements completely, this is not desired.
I am not talking about scrolling or zooming, but about clickable/touchable divs/spans/images, that can react some how. For instance I have a table where each cell could be clicked to mark (change color). Same with buttons, once you touch the button with the finger, the mouse cursor will stay on top of it and distract.

HTML5 does support the concept of touch events, perhaps you can dynamically change behavior/style etc in javascript based on detected events (e.g. turn your page into touch mode "cursor = none" if you detect a touch event but switch back to mouse visible style if you detect mouse move events).
This is by no means completely reliable as touchevent implementation is browser (somewhat patchy support at that), OS and possibly hardware dependent. e.g. Older OSes might translate touch event into mouse click events or older browsers might not support OS's touch events and OS fallsback to mouse click events.
See Touch And Mouse for more info that might help you.

Related

Touch-compatible JS quick navigation scrubber?

In long lists on iOS there exists a quick navigation "scrubber" on the right-hand side that you can brush your finger across to quickly jump from one item to the next, e.g. in the Music app if you have enough music available you'll see ABCD... allowing you to quickly jump to that letter of the alphabet in your list.
Does anyone know of a library or plugin to recreate this touch-based behavior on a website using anchor tags?
If not, are there any recommended approaches? My current thoughts are to disable touch events for the anchors if possible and capture touchbegin and touchmove on the parent div, then compare the coordinates of the touch with the coordinates of the anchor tags and fire off artificial 'click' events to cause the navigation.
Thanks in advance for any help.
https://github.com/desmosinc/scrubber
Simple, attractive html+js scrubber control.
Tested in recent versions of Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and IE9+. Works
with mouse events and touch events.

Is it possible to know if a real mouse is used on a device with touch features using javascript?

I'am working on a web site and I'am using modernizer to know if a device is touch compatible.
In this case, i filter all 'hover' of html tags of my application.
example : .no-touch div.cell:hover
But how can I know if the user also uses a real mouse on a touch device ?
More and more devices allow both and i want to display 'hover' on touch devices when a user prefers to use a mouse instead of (touch).
I'am using angularjs then a related solution should be great.
Thanks
Mouse events should trigger click events, whereas Touch events should trigger the touch events. However, let it be known now that some touch screens (typically older models) don't have "real" touch capability. All they do is take the touch input and convert it into clicks.
Also, I don't think the :hover attribute ever cares if it's mouse or touch. I think the only calculation that goes into that is whether or not the cursor is above the given element.

CSS :hover on mobile or other device as toggle

I am doing a simple :hover slide-in cover as shown in picture, it's supposed to slide in a "favorite article" control, which user can then click to favorite this item.
While it work well on desktop with mouse hover and click, I am not sure if it can be used as an effective control on mobile or other device (ie. click to toggle, then click again to favorite item) .
If I understand correctly, at least on iOS (Safari) and Android (Chrome), the default browser behaviour is to emulate touch as both hover and click. But is it a standard? eg.
Will Windows Phone or maybe a Wii U does the same?
Will click be fired about 300ms after hover, so there can be ghost click issue?
I can certainly bind a click/touch event on this element, just wondering if css :hover is sufficient nowadays.
To clarify: I am not asking about :hover support, which only make senses in a pointer driven environment. I am asking if devices can and should handle hover-able element as users click/tap (as iOS/Android do)
Your question isn't totally clear and I cannot understand whether you're asking "Can I use :hover across all the devices?" or "Will :hover behave the same across all the devices?" or "Is :hover a standard element on the web?"
Also it greatly depends of your concept of "all devices", if you have in mind the currently most used devices or you are taking in account also the less-known and used devices.
I will quote you the following, but I am pretty sure you have already read that:
Interactive user agents sometimes change the rendering in response to
user actions. CSS provides three pseudo-classes for common cases:
The :hover pseudo-class applies while the user designates an element
(with some pointing device), but does not activate it. For example, a
visual user agent could apply this pseudo-class when the cursor (mouse
pointer) hovers over a box generated by the element. User agents not
supporting interactive media do not have to support this pseudo-class.
Some conforming user agents supporting interactive media may not be
able to support this pseudo-class (e.g., a pen device). The :active
pseudo-class applies while an element is being activated by the user.
For example, between the times the user presses the mouse button and
releases it.
CSS does not define which elements may be in the above states, or how
the states are entered and left. Scripting may change whether elements
react to user events or not, and different devices and UAs may have
different ways of pointing to, or activating elements.
5.11.3 The dynamic pseudo-classes: :hover, :active, and :focus
http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/selector.html#dynamic-pseudo-classes
As you can see on the W3C specification it claims that the :hover pseudo-class is not required to a non-interactive media user agents as well as some interactive media user agents.
Therefore is safe to assume :hover is not always supported.
To dig deep on the matter, take a read at the following specification for Safari Mobile:
Additionally, Safari on iOS users interact with your web content
directly with their fingers, rather than using a mouse. This creates
new opportunities for touch-enabled interfaces, but does not work well
with hover states. For example, a mouse pointer can hover over a
webpage element and trigger an event; a finger on a Multi-Touch screen
cannot. For this reason, mouse events are emulated in Safari on iOS.
As a result, elements that rely only on mousemove, mouseover, mouseout
or the CSS pseudo-class :hover may not always behave as expected on a
touch-screen device such as iPad or iPhone.
You can handle touches directly or even detect advanced gestures in
Safari on iOS, using the DOM Touch events touchstart, touchmove,
touchend, and touchcancel. Unlike mouse events which are emulated, DOM
Touch events are specifically designed to work with touch interfaces,
so their behavior is reliable and expected.
5. Prepare for a touch interface
https://developer.apple.com/library/content/technotes/tn2010/tn2262/_index.html
Apple clearly states here that they tend to emulate the pointer with the touch gestures, however they clearly suggest to avoid using the :hover pseudo-class as won't behave the same on their touch device.
We could dig deeper and fetch every documentation for each user-agent existing on earth but the previous two are enough to assume the following:
Non interactive devices do not have to support :hover
Interactive devices can support the pseudo-class (but it's not mandatory and they can ignore it, for example screen-readers or braille screens)
Apple touch devices in absence of a pointer emulates :hover
It is safe to assume current touch devices also emulates :hover
It is safe to assume any other browser/device don't necessarily have to support :hover depending on their interface.
Very likely the recent browsers will all support :hover because is a visual aid for the user.
So to answer to all the question(s) I have assumed above:
"Is :hover a standard element on the web?"
Hover is a standard W3C in fact it claims it must be triggered by a pointer event, but isn't required for some interfaces.
"Can I use :hover across all the devices?"
Yes you probably can. The devices which won't support :hover very likely are devices/users that probably aren't your main target. Better ask yourself "Who will be the end-user of my product?" if they are only mobile users or only blind people or only people who like to browse using the Nintendo DS then don't use :hover events, otherwise do.
"Will :hover behave the same across all the devices?"
No, as Apple stated on their devices will not behave the same as a desktop would, and that probably reflects the same behaviour on all devices without a pointer.
If you plan to have an user action via a hover state don't do it. This is generally bad practice and it should avoided in any case, including desktop devices. Hover is not an call to action, click is. Hover should not be treated as a "toggle" but more like a visual helper for the user making him/her understand that element, if clicked, triggers an action.
If I understood your application then hover isn't reliable and in your specific case you should rethink on how it should work.
Use a more reliable method (and expected from your user)
Hovering your cursor over a webpage element is a common action when browsing with a mouse and keyboard, but there is no equivalent when it comes to touch-based browsing. This topic demonstrates how to use the aria-haspopup Document Object Model (DOM) property to simulate hover on touch-enabled devices with Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8.
This behavior is not applicable to Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 7 (which does not support hover simulation with aria-haspopup) or Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 8.1 (which has built-in touch hover support).
In touch scenarios, hover is applied to an element while it is being touched. However, tapping an element can also activate an element, such as navigating a link. Effectively, a tap is both hover and activation in one action. This makes interactive content hidden behind hover inaccessible for touch users. The interaction model is completely different, and there is no touch analog to hovering the cursor over a page element.
The best practice is to not use hover to hide content that a user can
interact with. Instead, consider using the onclick event to toggle the
visibility.
It seems to me that part of this question hasn't yet been answered, namely what is the actual behaviour of Windows phones in relation to 'hover'. To clarify:
Consider a web page written for desktop/mouse use in which there is css markup so that 'hover' changes a style applied to an object. If one views that page on iPhone or Android and taps on the object the style change occurs. (i.e. it is behaving as if the object had an onClick() event handler to change the style). Does the same thing happen on a Windows Phone?
I can answer that question, at least for the Nokia Lumia 630 running Win 8.1:
No. As you press down with your finger in the initial part of a tap the style change does occur, but when you release your finger at the end of the tap the style reverts to the original. (This is arguably a more valid interpretation of 'hover' for touch, although whether it is of any practical use is another matter.)
I would add that the iPhone/Safari interpretation of hover also has an 'off' state. This is triggered when you tap on another object.
To show this and allow testing on different devices/browsers I have set up a demo page at www.davidleader.net/mobiledemo.html. This implements onClick(), onMouseover() and :hover to change the opacity of an image, revealing a different one underneath. (It therefore depends on support for opacity, but this has been around for a while.) There is also a 'dumb graphic' to click on to demonstrate the end of hover on the iPhone.
To summarize, as well as there being no de jure standards for interpretation of hover on mobile devices there are no de facto ones either. Therefore if you are targetting mobiles, avoid 'hover'.
Theres none at the moment that has a good support for :hover state in mobile
See related question about this
I havent use Modernzr.js for mobile , but it says it can detect if the browser supports touch events , so basically it adds ".touch" class in the html tag if the user uses mobile device.
so you'll use it like this, for e.g
.touch a:active{ /*css code here */ }
hopefully this would help somehow
When it comes to mobile phones, I doubt there is any standard. Yes it is very common for a touch device to apply a hover state while is is being touched, but you can never tell if a user could be using any number of browsers that may interpret a hover state differently.
I would say your best bet would be to shoot for the lowest common denominator and just assume that every touch device can only respond to touch actions.
The answer to that, of course, is to write media queries and/or javascript to force the browsers to act the way you want it to.
That's just my personal philosophy, for what it is worth.

Lock mouse cursor while dragging in Chrome

This isn't the same question as all the others. I'm already preventing Chrome from entering text selection mode while dragging. (Edit: I only want to lock the icon/appearance, not restrict location or movement, and only between mousedown and mouseup) The issue I would like to avoid is that Chrome changes the cursor while dragging, to whatever is under the cursor (i.e.-i-beam while over text input control, hand while over hyperlink, etc).
IE and FireFox/Moz support element.setCapture() which I call in the mousedown event, that "locks" those browsers to the element so that the mouse cursor stays to whatever the cursor of that element is.. very nice. Chrome does not support that function, or anything like it, that I know of.
By watching mousemove and mouseup events on the document object instead of the element that was clicked, I'm able to still get most of the setCapture() behavior, in that I can track mouse events that happen outside of the element, and even outside the browser window. However, I'm left with one issue still, the mouse cursor changing in Chrome.
I believe you're looking for the Pointer Control Lock API, a recently introduced way for users to control the user's input device (when allowed). The big use case is gaming.
Without a secure and supported API, allowing sites to take over user input controls would be pretty disastrous (i.e. clickjacking and forced malware downloads), so if you're looking to "lock" the cursor then this is likely to be your only option.
I usually place an element over everything else with the intended cursor on mouse down and remove it on mouse up. Far from the cleanest approach but it works for me.

How to detect when multitouch finger moves onto child element?

My implementation works great with a mouse where I can use a delegated jQuery on("mousemove","*") handler to detect when the user mouses over something and this triggers an action.
I want to do the same for multi-touch, if the user drags their finger across a child element I want a delegated touchmove handler to pick it up. However it seems like only the callback of the container element ever gets called as the finger is dragged around on that container (and over its child elements).
Is there some way I can accomplish this without writing a point-in-rect test using JS?
Fiddle here.
Notice how on a PC when you click-drag across the B DIV it gets turned red correctly.
On an iOS device (with debug console enabled) you can only get it to show up blue (by tapping inside the 'B' div). I want to be able to drag over something and "pick it up".
Behavior is also identical on a Nexus 7 Android 4.1.1 tablet with (Mobile) Chrome.
It would appear that a previous discussion provides an unsatisfactory but workable solution to my problem:

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