I need to support touch events for a sketch tool in a hybrid mobile app (Rhomobile Rhodes). I'm interested in what jQuery plugins (or other JS libraries) others are using. I figured this would be of great interest, and didn't really find anything here from a search.
I've done the sketch part before in jQuery Mobile - we adapted the venerable
sketch.js - fixing the bugs and (horrible) inefficiencies - added a number of new tools, and hooked it into JQM "v" events (
vmousedown,
vmousemove, etc.). We made a nice silk purse out of a sow's ear, and users (contractors doing energy audits on homes and commercial buildings) have commented it is their favorite feature. (Drawing over photos.)
But for a new project I won't be using jQuery Mobile (just Bootstrap, if that). And the sketch code is aged. I'll probably be going with something like
paper.js to do the drawing, but still need to find something for touch events. (For now, I am using my tried-and true drawing code, though. Just need to get reliable touch events to trigger it.)
I found j
query.touch.events, which seems to be a massaged extract from jQuery Mobile, with events now renamed to
tapstart,
tapmove, etc.
I noticed right off the bat, though, that I never actually get a
tapstart. (Put a workaround in my sketch code...) So, started looking around for something else. And anything that is a massaged version of something from jQuery Mobile scares me! ;)
hammer.js seems popular, has fairly recent activity (but seems trailing off - perhaps it is "complete"...)
I see there is also a 300-msec delay removal library to go with (
hammer-time.js). Though I question if that is something that is needed any more. I've used
fastclick.js fairly recently, but was really planning on going without on this project, as I think webviews I care about have fixed the problem. (And Financial Times stopped supporting the script.)
I've seen some favorable comments about zingtouch:
I need the usual start, move, end. And I need to recognize pan and zoom gestures. And probably rotate. I have to say I like the single-finger rotate in zingtouch.
I'm hoping to support:
- iOS 9 or 10, webview or wkwebview. (maybe just ios10)
- Android perhaps as far back as 4.4.2 (many Android devices are locked-in on older versions, and it is for students, so can't be too demanding about devices). In any cases, only versions that use Chrome for webview.
- Windows 10, including surface. Unfortunately it will use an edge webview. (Not webkit, that sure would be nice!) No need for Windows phone, though!
Would love to hear positive/negative comments about the above plugins/libraries or others.
I'm not interested in bloated frameworks that might also include touch and gesture recognition. But others might, so feel free to add comments about frameworks as well.