Handle onTouchDown on mobile browser and onMouseDown on desktop/laptop?

Question

I'm developing a web game application with a, HTML5 canvas that has to react to "click" events (in the general meaning).

On a mobile platform (or touch-capable), that means reacting to onTouchDown, on a desktop/laptop platform (with a mouse or pad), that means reacting to onMouseDown.

Problem is, if I handle both events, then sometimes the same "click" will result in both events getting fired, so I get a double signaling.

What would be the best way to handle that?

Currently, upon the first touch event I receive, I turn off mouse events, but that may be a bit heavy handed if the platform supports both touch & mouse clicks (f.i. an Android tablet with attached keyboard/pad/mouse)

Measuring the delay between touch & click to ignore a click after a touch doesn't work too well, as there are circumstances where user may touch/click at a high frequency, so a too long delay leads to dropped double taps/clicks, and a too short delay lets through the occasional double signaling slipping through.

I've looked at user-agent detection, but that seems quite fragile (many user agents out there), and doesn't solve the cases where the platform has both touch & mouse/pad.

Answer 1

Maybe a combination of your suggestion:

Measuring the delay between touch & click to ignore a click after a touch doesn't work too well, as there are circumstances where user may touch/click at a high frequency, so a too long delay leads to dropped double taps/clicks, and a too short delay lets through the occasional double signaling slipping through

And detecting the x,y coordinates of the tap would decrease the false positives. So if both events (tap & click) happening in sequence got the same coordinates they are handled as the same.

Or maybe let the user switch (through some sort of options screen) if he wants to use mouse or touch for his device if both is supported. Display a warning message for example saying you're on a touch device so we enabled touch events, if you're using a mouse please see options or something like that.

Most users would be happy with the auto-choice and everybody unhappy can change it.