I confirmed that jQuery Mobile is binding the "click" event for this type of button routing. See line 3619 in version 1.1.1 development:
- // click routing - direct to HTTP or Ajax, accordingly
- $( document ).bind( "click", function( event ) {
- ...
- });
Simply changing that "click" to "vclick" speeds things up like I want. Notice that the active state of the button is changed just above this line though, also on "vclick".
I know my solution shouldn't involve messing with jQuery Mobile source code though. If I can figure out a nicer way to override this then I'll post it here.