[webkit-dev] pointer events specification - first editors draft

[Adam Barth]

On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 5:53 PM, Benjamin Poulain <benjamin at webkit.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 8:23 AM, Adam Barth <abarth at webkit.org> wrote:
>> I'm sympathetic to these concerns, but, unfortunately, I don't see any
>> other path that leads to interoperability with Internet Explorer.
>
> Currently, there is little to no content that supports pointer events. There
> is also little to no demand for it for the reasons I mentioned before.

It seems very likely that authors will write content that uses pointer
events given that it's the only way to learn about touch input on IE
10 on Windows 8.  If we don't implement pointer events, all of these
web sites are going to have separate code paths for IE+Firefox and for
Safari+Chrome.  If we wait for this content to be authored before
implementing pointer events, we'll have dug ourselves a deep hole that
we'll spend years crawling out of.

> I would prefer WebKit to be wise and wait for either good use cases, or a
> better spec.

In my view, the wise course of action is for all user agents to
implement an interoperable set of input events so that authors don't
need to have separate code paths for different user agents.  As far as
I can tell, the only candidate for those events are pointer events.  I
asked you before if you knew of any other paths to interoperability
and you didn't respond.

(Of course, that doesn't mean we should slavishly implement whatever
Microsoft proposes.  That's why there's a working group in the W3C: to
refine and improve the feature's design and specification.)

Adam