Detecting that the browser has no mouse and is touch-only

Question

I\'m developing a webapp (not a website with pages of interesting text) with a very different interface for touch (your finger hides the screen when you click) and mouse (re

Answer 1

How about listening for a mousemove event on the document. Then until you hear that event you assume that the device is touch or keyboard only.

var mouseDetected = false;
function onMouseMove(e) {
  unlisten('mousemove', onMouseMove, false);
  mouseDetected = true;
  // initializeMouseBehavior();
}
listen('mousemove', onMouseMove, false);

(Where listen and unlisten delegate to addEventListener or attachEvent as appropriate.)

Hopefully this wouldn't lead to too much visual jank, it would suck if you need massive re-layouts based on mode...