prevent touchstart when swiping

Question

I have a scrollable list on a mobile device. They want people to be able to scroll the list via swiping, and also select a row by tapping.

The catch is combining th

Answer 1

Here's what I eventually came up with to allow for a list of items to be scrollable via swipe, but also each item to be 'triggerable' via a tap. In addition, you can still use with a keyboard (using onclick).

I think this is similar to Netlight_Digital_Media's answer. I need to study that one a bit more.

$(document)
// log the position of the touchstart interaction
.bind('touchstart', function(e){ 
  touchStartPos = $(window).scrollTop();
})
// log the position of the touchend interaction
.bind('touchend', function(e){
  // calculate how far the page has moved between
  // touchstart and end. 
  var distance = touchStartPos - $(window).scrollTop();

  var $clickableItem; // the item I want to be clickable if it's NOT a swipe

  // adding this class for devices that
  // will trigger a click event after
  // the touchend event finishes. This 
  // tells the click event that we've 
  // already done things so don't repeat

  $clickableItem.addClass("touched");      

  if (distance > 20 || distance < -20){
        // the distance was more than 20px
        // so we're assuming they intended
        // to swipe to scroll the list and
        // not selecting a row. 
    } else {
        // we'll assume it was a tap 
        whateverFunctionYouWantToTriggerOnTapOrClick()
    }
});


$($clickableItem).live('click',function(e){
 // for any non-touch device, we need 
 // to still apply a click event
 // but we'll first check to see
 // if there was a previous touch
 // event by checking for the class
 // that was left by the touch event.
if ($(this).hasClass("touched")){
  // this item's event was already triggered via touch
  // so we won't call the function and reset this for
  // the next touch by removing the class
  $(this).removeClass("touched");
} else {
  // there wasn't a touch event. We're
  // instead using a mouse or keyboard
  whateverFunctionYouWantToTriggerOnTapOrClick()
}
});