

Intent to Implement: Pointer Events in Chrome - shawndumas
https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink-dev/ODWmcKNQl0I

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iMark
Apple's continuing opposition is disappointing.

The situation with Safari is a worrying echo of Internet Explorer's heyday,
with an important player dragging their heels when it comes to implementing
standards.

I'll be curious as to how this plays out. Safari, even on mobile, isn't
anywhere near as close to the sort of dominance IE had at its peak, so I'd
hope pressure over standards will eventually force Apple to capitulate.

~~~
camhenlin
Apple has no benefit in supporting pointer events. The devices they sell only
have mice or touch interfaces, which are well-handled by mouse and touch
events. There is no benefit to Apple customers to support pointer events, only
benefits to developers who think pointer events are "better"

~~~
gtjrossi
I can see value in finding a way to expose individual touch points from their
new touchpad to JavaScript. We looked at doing something similar in IE,
actually, but didn't get around to it in time.

If they want to do that, then they're going to have lots of compatibility
problems doing it with Touch Events. Too much code out there expects the
presence of Touch Events to mean a touch-only device. So if you enable TE on a
laptop, suddenly sites stop working for mouse/track. :-( Pointer Events don't
have this problem.

~~~
camhenlin
Interesting thought, I'm not sure if PointerEvents would be handled correctly
with a trackpad that would have traditionally used as Mouse input either.
Seems like the developer would have to know _how_ the trackpad is being used
more than anything else since mouse/touch are very different behaviors.

~~~
gtjrossi
yep, we imagined this would be surfaced as a new event.pointerType value,
allowing code to specifically target the device if desired.

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spb
This is in part due to feedback from the community:
[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=162757#c...](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=162757#c146)

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aikah
I'm glad the Chrome team is doing this. Pointer events is a good spec , I hope
Apple will do the same eventually.

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pippy
I'm going against the grain and make the assertion that improving the Touch
Events was the better option here. Touch Events are supported by more browsers
and devices and already have many of the functional requirements that Pointer
Events have.

While it makes sense to have a consistent API, for the foreseeable future
there will be three event standards; touch, pointer, and mouse. While if there
was focus on an existing standard it would leave web developers with a smaller
room for error. A direct result of Blink using the Pointer Event standard is
that there will be more web bloat such as jQuery wrappers to abstract
interaction.

Most web developers like have experienced the mess of getting touch events and
mouse events feeling consistent across different devices and browsers.
Throwing more hardware and an extra API into the mix is only going to make
things worse.

I welcome the much needed pressure support, for the average web developer and
user the result will likely be detrimental. Colour me cynical, each browser
has to nail its implementation or we're going to see another messy standard.
IE for example still does not support Touch Events, even on WP. This makes
front end development painful if you support the device.

~~~
dmethvin
> IE for example still does not support Touch Events, even on WP.

Yes they do. However, IE11 doesn't support Touch Events on desktop because
there is _already_ too much code out there that makes stupid assumptions about
Touch Events implying a tablet or phone without a mouse.
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2014/09/05/making-the-
web...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2014/09/05/making-the-web-just-
work-with-any-input.aspx)

~~~
pippy
MSIE 11 for mobile is still in developer preview mode, and hasn't been
released. As for the desktop version, here's
caniuse:[http://caniuse.com/#feat=touch](http://caniuse.com/#feat=touch)

I'm unaware that they released a desktop version where they enabled it, I'll
have to look into it.

~~~
gtjrossi
The version of IE with Touch Events (Windows Phone 8.1 Update) is no longer in
preview. You can buy retail devices with it on it today, actually.

For the desktop version, see my recent blog post:
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2015/02/24/pointer-
events...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2015/02/24/pointer-
events-w3c-recommendation-interoperable-touch-and-removing-the-dreaded-300ms-
tap-delay.aspx)

