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

@SamuelRossille No browsers that I'm aware of expose the existence of (or lack thereof) a mouse, unfortunately.

So, with that being said, we just have to try and do the best we can with our existing option... events. I know it's not exactly what you're looking for... agreed it is currently far from ideal.

We can do our best to figure out whether a user is using a mouse or touch at any given moment. Here is a quick and dirty example using jQuery & Knockout:

//namespace
window.ns = {};

// for starters, we'll briefly assume if touch exists, they are using it - default behavior
ns.usingTouch = ko.observable(Modernizr.touch); //using Modernizr here for brevity.  Substitute any touch detection method you desire

// now, let's sort out the mouse
ns.usingMouse = ko.computed(function () {
    //touch
    if (ns.usingTouch()) {
        //first, kill the base mousemove event
        //I really wish browsers would stop trying to handle this within touch events in the first place
        window.document.body.addEventListener('mousemove', function (e) {
            e.preventDefault();
            e.stopImmediatePropagation();
        }, true);

        //remove mouse class from body
        $('body').removeClass("mouse");

        //switch off touch listener
        $(document).off(".ns-touch");

        // switch on a mouse listener
        $(document).on('mousemove.ns-mouse', function (e) {
            if (Math.abs(window.lastX - e.clientX) > 0 || window.lastY !== e.clientY) {
                ns.usingTouch(false);  //this will trigger re-evaluation of ns.usingMouse() and result in ns.usingMouse() === true
            }
        });

        return false;
    }
    //mouse
    else {
        //add mouse class to body for styling
        $('body').addClass("mouse");

        //switch off mouse listener
        $(document).off(".ns-mouse");

        //switch on a touch listener
        $(document).on('touchstart.ns-touch', function () { ns.usingTouch(true) });

        return true;
    }
});

//tests:
//ns.usingMouse()
//$('body').hasClass('mouse');

---

You can now bind/subscribe to usingMouse() & usingTouch() and/or style your interface with the body.mouse class. The interface will switch back and forth as soon as a mouse cursor is detected and on touchstart.

Hopefully we'll have some better options from the browser vendors soon.