How do I capture when a finger touches the screen and when a finger is removed from a screen on touchscreen device

Question

I am developing an app for a touchscreen and I would like to capture the equivalent of the mouse down and mouse up events.

For example, when the user has their finger touching the screen, a javascript function will execute, but when the finger leaves the screen function stops.

I am using firefox 3.5, with the jQuery framework for my javascript.

Thanks for any help, Ben

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 01 '10 at 08:28

2

Just use jQuery mousedown and mouseup.

There are no specific events for using a finger, because all the finger actions do are to fire the mouse events on the page:

$(document).mousedown(function(e) {
   alert("Finger is Down");
});

$(document).mouseup(function(e) {
   alert("Finger is Up");
});

answered Oct 01 '10 at 08:28

djdd87

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This is what I originally tried before posting the question. The mouseup event doesnt get fired when the finger leaves the screen – Globalz Oct 01 '10 at 14:23
Perhaps you should updated your question with some code and show it now working. – djdd87 Oct 01 '10 at 14:29

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 16 '13 at 16:54

The touchstart event fires when a finger touches the screen no matter if the user is going to tap or scroll. mousedown does not work in these cases.

$(document).on('touchstart', 'body', function(){
  alert("Screen touched");
});

I do not know any event that fires when a finger leaves the screen.

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 28 '14 at 19:17

1

You are probably interested in the touchcancel event: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Events/touchcancel.

answered Sep 28 '14 at 19:17

ngryman

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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 01 '10 at 08:30

0

I think this jQuery plugin can help you.

answered Oct 01 '10 at 08:30

Shikiryu

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How do I capture when a finger touches the screen and when a finger is removed from a screen on touchscreen device

4 Answers4