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Browser events: Touch Events

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Touch events are triggered when viewing the page on a touch device, such as a smartphone or tablet.

They allow you to track multitouch events.

There are four touch events:

  • touchstart a touch event has started (the surface is touched)
  • touchend a touch event has ended (the surface is no longer touched)
  • touchmove the finger (or whatever is touching the device) moves over the surface
  • touchcancel the touch event has been cancelled

Every time a touch event occurs, you receive a TouchEvent object:

const link = document.getElementById('my-link')
link.addEventListener('touchstart', (event) => {
  // touch event started
})

Here are the properties you can access on that event:

  • identifier a unique identifier for this specific event. Used to track multi-touch events. Same finger = same identifier.
  • clientX / clientY the x and y coordinates of the touch point relative to the browser window, regardless of scrolling
  • screenX / screenY the x and y coordinates of the touch point in screen coordinates
  • pageX / pageY the x and y coordinates of the touch point in page coordinates (including scrolling)
  • target the element touched

Lessons in this unit:

0: Introduction
1: Handling events
2: The `DOMContentLoaded` event
3: The `event` object
4: Mouse events
5: Keyboard events
6: `preventDefault()`
7: Stopping event propagation
8: Bubbling and capturing
9: Form submit event
10: Input fields events
11: Creating custom events
12: Keyboard Events
13: Mouse Events
14: ▶︎ Touch Events
15: Form Events