/

Working with Touch Events in JavaScript

Working with Touch Events in JavaScript

Touch events are essential when developing for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. They enable you to handle user interactions with your web page through touch gestures. In this article, we will explore the basics of working with touch events in JavaScript.

The Four Touch Events

JavaScript provides four touch events that you can use to track user interactions:

  1. touchstart: Triggered when a touch event starts, meaning the user touches the screen.
  2. touchend: Fired when a touch event ends, indicating that the user has released the screen.
  3. touchmove: Occurs when the user moves their finger or any other object touching the screen.
  4. touchcancel: Triggered when a touch event is canceled, such as when the user moves out of the browser window.

To handle touch events, you need to add event listeners to the target element. Here’s an example using the touchstart event:

1
2
3
4
const link = document.getElementById('my-link');
link.addEventListener('touchstart', event => {
  // Touch event started
});

Touch Event Properties

When a touch event occurs, JavaScript provides various properties that you can access to gather information about the touch. These properties include:

  • identifier: A unique identifier for the specific touch event. It is especially useful for tracking multi-touch events, allowing you to differentiate between different fingers.
  • clientX / clientY: The x and y coordinates of the touch relative to the browser window. It disregards any scrolling that may have occurred.
  • screenX / screenY: The x and y coordinates of the touch in screen coordinates.
  • pageX / pageY: The x and y coordinates of the touch in page coordinates, taking into account any scrolling that has happened.
  • target: The element that was touched by the user.

By accessing these properties, you can retrieve relevant information about the touch events for further processing.

To learn more about JavaScript events, you can check out our guide on JavaScript events.

tags: [“touch events”, “JavaScript events”, “mobile development”, “touch gestures”]