Prevent grey overlay on touchstart in mobile Safari/Webview - ios

I am building an iOS app in webkit, so my whole UI is a webview. on touchStart of any element near the outer boundary of the webview (that does not have a touchStart event bound to it), I get a translucent grey box overlay the full area of the webview. I've eliminated -webkit-tap-highlight-color or -webkit-touch-callout as causes. What do I do to remove this behavior?

just put this style, you still have the default actions but without the gray overlay
a {
-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0,0,0,0);
}
if you want to remove the actions panel, just put this
a {
-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0,0,0,0);
-webkit-touch-callout: none;
}
And there you go! clean links at last!

My working solution is to capture and preventDefault on the touchstart event of the body of the html document. All other more explicit event handlers are unaffected. I did run into an issue with select elements, which I addressed in the body event handler (I'm using jQuery):
$('body').live(
'touchstart',
function(e){
if(e.target.localName != 'select'){
e.preventDefault();
}
}
)

Related

Disable pinch zoom on IOS 13 safari

I know this question has been asked so much. But have there been any updates on being able to disable pinch zoom on the latest version of safari?
I have a map application that implements pinch to zoom on specific elements of the webpage (the map). I want users to be able to zoom in on the map, while the UI around the page stays the same. This has destroyed my users experience on IOS.
Is there a way to at least disable pinch to zoom on specific elements?
Here is my webpage so you can see exactly what I'm talking about. I hope you can see why disabling viewport zoom (at least when the user pinches on the map) would actually be a benefit, for accessibility.
https://www.yapms.com/app/?t=USA_2020_presidential
more info:
I'm using hammerjs to zoom in on specific elements on the webpage already, so I want to disable apples viewport zoom on those elements.
Maybe this event listener on the document will help
document.addEventListener('touchmove', function (event) {
if (event.scale !== 1) { event.preventDefault(); }
}, { passive: false });
Resource: disable viewport zooming iOS 10+ safari?
Please see Casper Fabricius answer for detailed elaboration about this
None, of the JavaScript solutions worked for me. What I did to fix the issue on IOS was to add the following CSS to each element that I wanted to prevent the default zoom action on.
touch-action: none;
I think the most likely use case for apps built with web tech will be that you do not want the user to manually pinch zoom, but you still need them to scroll in the Y co-ordinate. You can enable this on the whole app by targeting the html tag in css. Disabling pinch zoom is necessary for web based "apps" to behave like "apps". Accessibility can be accommodated in different ways, such as offering preferences to adjust text sizes. I tested this on Safari and Edge on iPhoneX OS ver 13.5.1
<style type="text/css" media="screen">
html {
-webkit-text-size-adjust: none;
touch-action: pan-y; /*prevent user scaling*/
}
</style>
I have used a combination of touch-action and pointer-events to disable all gestures everywhere and allow basic touching only on interactive elements. Works well in Safari in iOS 15. Can be modified to allow some gestures, e.g., by replacing none by pan-y etc. I have used it to implement control panels or games that involve quick touching of buttons, which lead to unwanted zoom and scroll gestures.
* {
touch-action: none;
pointer-events: none;
}
input, button {
pointer-events: auto;
}
Also, fixed position efficiently bypasses scrolling and keeps the elements on the screen.
html, body {
position: fixed;
}

:hover on ios mobile devices turns into double-touch instead of hover

First off, this is not a clone of: iPad/iPhone hover problem causes the user to double click a link
because I want an answer that is purely CSS. All of the answers in this link require js or jQuery and the one CSS answer involves background images. I'm trying to change the opacity and that's it.
CSS wants to gear itself towards the mobile revolution yet every solution I see for a simple 'touchDown'(aka touch-hover) creating a hover effect requires javascript or jQuery.
Here's some simple code to illustrate what I mean:
.btn {
border-radius: 5px;
display: block;
opacity: 1; <--from
background: red;
text-align: center;
line-height: 40px;
font-weight: bold;
&:hover {
opacity:.7; <--to
transition: opacity .2s ease-out; <--fun fade animation :)
-moz-transition: opacity .2s ease-out;
-webkit-transition: opacity .2s ease-out;
-o-transition: opacity .2s ease-out;
}
}
Tested in Chrome & Safari
iOS will not trigger a link click event on the first tap if the :hover state either:
Has a CSS transition animation
Reveals child content (such as a submenu, tooltip or ::before/::after element)
In both cases the first tap will trigger the :hover state and a second tap will trigger the link (or click event).
If you remove the animation or the child elements you should get it to trigger within a single tap.
This great article from CSS Tricks digs a bit deeper into the issue:
The Annoying Mobile Double-Tap Link Issue
TL;DR: don't rely on hover to reveal things
From the source recommended in #ihodonald's answer also simply recommends not using hover at all:
It’s probably best to just not rely on hover to reveal anything. The tech to work around it isn’t quite there yet.
And from Trend Walton's article:
Ultimately, I think seeing hover states fade away will make the web a better place. There never has been any substitute for concise content, clear interaction, and simple design. If we focus on core elements that make browsing the web great, our sites will function properly no matter how people use them.
Use the touchstart event instead of click on touchscreen devices. This example fixes the issue for iPhone and iPad.
if (
navigator.userAgent.match(/iPhone/i) ||
navigator.userAgent.match(/iPod/i)
) {
// iPhone double-click polyfill
$(document).on("touchstart", ".btn-that-does-something", function (e) {
e.preventDefault();
doSomething(this);
});
$(document).on("click", ".btn-that-does-something", function (e) {
// no-op
e.preventDefault();
});
} else {
$(document).on("click", ".btn-that-does-something", function (e) {
e.preventDefault();
doSomething(this);
});
}

Safari not firing touch events

I've got a small jsfiddle - http://jsfiddle.net/qhguktsn/5/. When you tap the text at the top of the link (iOS mobile Safari), you get only the mouse events- no touch events at all, not even on the body. If you tap it on the bottom of the text, you get touch events. We depend on touch events for handling 300ms delay.
How can we get touch events for tapping on the top of the text as well as the bottom?
HTML:
<div style="margin-left:200px;margin-top:200px">
<a style="vertical-align:center;height: 20px, width: 20px;font-size:100px" href="javascript: void 0">text</a>
</div>
JS:
jQuery("a").on("mousedown", function() { document.body.appendChild(document.createTextNode("mousedown ")); });
jQuery("a").on("mouseup", function() { document.body.appendChild(document.createTextNode("mouseup ")); });
jQuery("a").on("touchstart", function() { document.body.appendChild(document.createTextNode("touchstart ")); });
jQuery("a").on("touchend", function() { document.body.appendChild(document.createTextNode("touchend ")); });
jQuery("a").on("click", function() { document.body.appendChild(document.createTextNode("click ")); });
jQuery(document.body).on("touchstart", function() { document.body.appendChild(document.createTextNode("body touchstart ")); });
jQuery(document.body).on("touchend", function() { document.body.appendChild(document.createTextNode("body touchend ")); });
This is know bug in Mobile Safari. https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=105406
There is another one as well with adding node form different document. https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=135628
In order to fix them there are several ways.
The first one is to use a small library called fastclick, which supports many mobile devices and OS.
The second options is to add event.stopPropagation(); event.preventDefault(); like that. You need both of them.
jQuery("a").on("mousedown", function(event) {
event.stopPropagation();
event.preventDefault();
document.body.appendChild(document.createTextNode("mousedown "));
});
The third option is by using the viewport meta tag like that <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, user-scalable=no">. This will eliminate all touch delays, without any workarounds. But, again on Safari it may not act like in the other browsers, because hey Safari is the new IE
There is also touch-action, but it's not supported in most of the mobile browsers. :(
The touch events on the body are due to the body element being shifted down by the margin-top, putting an outline on the body element outlines the touch-target:
body { outline: 1px solid red; }
http://jsfiddle.net/qhguktsn/11/
The second part of the mystery seems to be that the click target expands outside the touch-target:
Touching the red outline will not trigger a touch event on the body element, but the click event seems to fire when tapped anywhere within the grey -webkit-tap-highlight-color region which expands outside the anchor itself. Taps at the very top will therefore trigger click events on the anchor, but not touch events on the body.
I found that the touch event is not fired when clicking on an element contained by a position:fixed element that extends beyond the window. I handled this by making the parent container shorter (used JS to get the exact window height).
This problem was in an app UIWebview using iOS 10. (Yes, still using UIWebview)

Why/when do I have to tap twice to trigger click on iOS

Ok I feel like I'm crazy...
I'm looking at Mobile Safari on iOs 6.0. I can't seem to establish any rhyme or reason as to when tapping on an element will trigger click. In many cases, it seems I need to tap once to trigger a hover and then again to trigger a click.
The Mobile Safari spec says : "... The flow of events generated by one-finger and two-finger gestures are conditional depending on whether or not the selected element is clickable or scrollable... A clickable element is a link, form element, image map area, or any other element with mousemove, mousedown, mouseup, or onclick handlers... Because of these differences, you might need to change some of your elements to clickable elements..."
It goes on to suggest that the developer "...Add a dummy onclick handler, onclick = "void(0)", so that Safari on iOS recognizes the span element as a clickable element."
However, my testing has shown these statements to be false.
JsFiddle : http://jsfiddle.net/6Ymcy/1/
html
<div id="plain-div" onclick="void(0)">Plain Div</div>
js
document.getElementById('plain-div').addEventListener('click', function() {
alert('click');
});
Try tapping the element on an iPad. Nothing Happens
But I digress. What is important to me is to find out the following question:
Exactly what are the criteria that determine when clicking on an element will fire a 'click' event on the first tap? As opposed to firing a 'hover' event on the first tap and a 'click' event on the second tap.
In my testing, anchor elements are the only elements that I can get to fire a click on the first tap, and then, only occasionally and inconsistently.
Here's where I start to feel crazy. I searched the internet far and wide and found next to nothing about this issue. Is it just me?! Does anybody know where there's been any discussion about the criteria for two-taps and or an approach to dealing with these limitations?
I'm happy to respond to questions/requests.
Thanks!
I had this same issue. The simplest solution is not to bind the mouseenter event on iOS (or any touch enabled target platform). If that is not bound the hover event won't get triggered and click is triggered on the first tap.
iOS will trigger the hover event if an element is "display: none;" in the normal state and "display: block;" or inline-block on :hover.
It is also worthwhile to mention that ':hover' pseudo-class may prevent 'click' event from firing.
As in mobile browsers click is sometimes used to replace hovering action (e.g. to show dropdown menu), they may trigger artificial 'hover' state on first click and then handle click on the second one.
See https://css-tricks.com/annoying-mobile-double-tap-link-issue/ for detailed explanation and examples of that.
I solved this issue by first detecting if it was an iphone, then binding the mouseup event to the function I was trying to call.
if ((navigator.userAgent.match(/iPhone/i)) || (navigator.userAgent.match(/iPod/i))){
$('foo').on('mouseup', function(){
...
}
}
I tried other events but mouseup seemed to work best. Other events like touchend were firing even if the user was trying to scroll. Mouseup doesn't seem to get fired if you drag your finger after touching.
Credit David Walsh (and ESPN) for the iPhone detection.
http://davidwalsh.name/detect-iphone
I was having this issue using Bootstrap, and I found out that the culprit was the tooltip. Remove the tooltip from the button and you don't need to tap it twice anymore.
my solution was to remove the :hover state from the css, and when you think about it, mobile browsers should not have :hover state, since there is no hover..
if you want to keep the hover state on desktop, you can use media query, like so:
.button {
background: '#000'
}
#media (min-width: 992px) {
.button:hover {
background: '#fff'
}
}
You need #media (hover) { /* Your styles */ }
As far as I can tell, this problem in various forms is still present.
In 2019, most, if not all of the above cases can be now ameliorated using a CSS only solution... it will however, require some stylesheet refactoring.
label {
opacity:0.6
}
label input[type=radio]:checked+span {
opacity:1
}
.myClass::before { } /* Leave me empty to catch all browsers */
a:link { color: blue }
a:visited { color: purple }
a:hover { } /* Leave me empty to catch all browsers */
a:active { font-weight: bold }
/* Your styles */
#media (hover) {
a:hover { color: red }
.myClass::before { background: black }
label:hover {
opacity:0.8
}
}
You can read in more detail here why Fastclick, :pseudo, <span>, just targeting "desktop" resolutions and first tap is hover and second tap is click are all fixed using #media (hover): https://css-tricks.com/annoying-mobile-double-tap-link-issue/
:hover doesn't offer the clarity it once did as stylus input, touch desktops and mobile have a disparate interpretation of the notion.
The display:none; solution mentioned above works on iOS (not tested on later than 9.3.5), but not on Android.
A hacky css-only solution is to hide the link below the element using a minus z-index and to bring the link up to a positive z-index on :hover or first-touch (with a small transition delay). I guess one could achieve the same result with css translate instead of z-index. Works on iOS and Android.
In this way you can display a hover effect on a link on a touch-screen device with the first tap without activating the url until a second tap.
you can use ontouchstart instead of onclick event on element and call the function focus() on this element if it is input :
document.getElementById('plain-div').addEventListener('touchstart', function() {
//write body of your function here
alert(“hi”);
// if input needs double tap
this.focus();
});
I was googling around to see if i could help you out some and found this piece of code. Try modifying it to your likings and see if you can do what your trying. If you have troubles understanding it let me know and i'll elaborate more. Theres also more to it here where i found it
Jquery hover function and click through on tablet
$('clickable_element').live("touchstart",function(e){
if ($(this).data('clicked_once')) {
// element has been tapped (hovered), reset 'clicked_once' data flag and return true
$(this).data('clicked_once', false);
return true;
} else {
// element has not been tapped (hovered) yet, set 'clicked_once' data flag to true
e.preventDefault();
$(this).trigger("mouseenter"); //optional: trigger the hover state, as preventDefault(); breaks this.
$(this).data('clicked_once', true);
}
});
Never figured out the criteria, but this solved my problem by instantly triggering a click as soon as an element is tapped:
https://developers.google.com/mobile/articles/fast_buttons
I had to make a number of additions/modifications to their code to get it working correctly, let me know if you're interested in my method and I will try to post an explanation.
Cheers :)

Is it possible to force ignore the :hover pseudoclass for iPhone/iPad users?

I have some css menus on my site that expand with :hover (without js)
This works in a semi-broken way on iDevices, for example a tap will activate the :hover rule and expand the menu, but then tapping elsewhere doesn't remove the :hover. Also if there is a link inside the element that is :hover'ed, you have to tap twice to activate the link (first tap triggers :hover, second tap triggers link).
I've been able to make things work nicely on iphone by binding the touchstart event.
The problem is that sometimes mobile safari still chooses to trigger the :hover rule from the css instead of my touchstart events!
I know this is the problem because when I disable all the :hover rules manually in the css, mobile safari works great (but regular browsers obviously don't anymore).
Is there a way to dynamically "cancel" :hover rules for certain elements when the user is on mobile safari?
See and compare iOS behavior here: http://jsfiddle.net/74s35/3/
Note: that only some css properties trigger the two-click behavior, e.g. display:none; but not background: red; or text-decoration: underline;
I found that ":hover" is unpredictable in iPhone/iPad Safari. Sometimes tap on element make that element ":hover", while sometimes it drifts to other elements.
For the time being, I just have a "no-touch" class at body.
<body class="yui3-skin-sam no-touch">
...
</body>
And have all CSS rules with ":hover" below ".no-touch":
.no-touch my:hover{
color: red;
}
Somewhere in the page, I have javascript to remove no-touch class from body.
if ('ontouchstart' in document) {
Y.one('body').removeClass('no-touch');
}
This doesn't look perfect, but it works anyway.
:hover isn't the issue here. Safari for iOS follows a very odd rule. It fires mouseover and mousemove first; if anything is changed during these events, 'click' and related events don't get fired:
mouseenter and mouseleave appear to be included, though they're not specified in the chart.
If you modify anything as a result of these events, click events won't get fired. That includes something higher up in the DOM tree. For example, this will prevent single clicks from working on your website with jQuery:
$(window).on('mousemove', function() {
$('body').attr('rel', Math.random());
});
Edit: For clarification, jQuery's hover event includes mouseenter and mouseleave. These will both prevent click if content is changed.
A better solution, without any JS, css class and viewport check: you can use Interaction Media Features (Media Queries Level 4)
Like this:
#media (hover) {
// properties
my:hover {
color: red;
}
}
iOS Safari supports it
More about:
https://www.jonathanfielding.com/an-introduction-to-interaction-media-features/
The browser feature detection library Modernizer includes a check for touch events.
It’s default behavior is to apply classes to your html element for each feature being detected. You can then use these classes to style your document.
If touch events are not enabled Modernizr can add a class of no-touch:
<html class="no-touch">
And then scope your hover styles with this class:
.no-touch a:hover { /* hover styles here */ }
You can download a custom Modernizr build to include as few or as many feature detections as you need.
Here's an example of some classes that may be applied:
<html class="js no-touch postmessage history multiplebgs
boxshadow opacity cssanimations csscolumns cssgradients
csstransforms csstransitions fontface localstorage sessionstorage
svg inlinesvg no-blobbuilder blob bloburls download formdata">
Some devices (as others have said) have both touch and mouse events. The Microsoft Surface for example has a touch screen, a trackpad AND a stylus which actually raises hover events when it is hovered above the screen.
Any solution that disables :hover based on the presence of 'touch' events will also affect Surface users (and many other similar devices). Many new laptops are touch and will respond to touch events - so disabling hovering is a really bad practice.
This is a bug in Safari, there's absolutely no justification for this terrible behavior. I refuse to sabotage non iOS browsers because of a bug in iOS Safari which has apparently been there for years. I really hope they fix this for iOS8 next week but in the meantime....
My solution:
Some have suggested using Modernizr already, well Modernizr allows you to create your own tests. What I'm basically doing here is 'abstracting' the idea of a browser that supports :hover into a Modernizr test that I can use throughout my code without hardcoding if (iOS) throughout.
Modernizr.addTest('workinghover', function ()
{
// Safari doesn't 'announce' to the world that it behaves badly with :hover
// so we have to check the userAgent
return navigator.userAgent.match(/(iPad|iPhone|iPod)/g) ? false : true;
});
Then the css becomes something like this
html.workinghover .rollover:hover
{
// rollover css
}
Only on iOS will this test fail and disable rollover.
The best part of such abstraction is that if I find it breaks on a certain android or if it's fixed in iOS9 then I can just modify the test.
Adding the FastClick library to your page will cause all taps on a mobile device to be turned into click events (regardless of where the user clicks), so it should also fix the hover issue on mobile devices. I edited your fiddle as an example: http://jsfiddle.net/FvACN/8/.
Just include the fastclick.min.js lib on your page, and activate via:
FastClick.attach(document.body);
As a side benefit, it will also remove the annoying 300ms onClick delay that mobile devices suffer from.
There are a couple of minor consequences to using FastClick that may or may not matter for your site:
If you tap somewhere on the page, scroll up, scroll back down, and then release your finger on the exact same position that you initially placed it, FastClick will interpret that as a "click", even though it's obviously not. At least that's how it works in the version of FastClick that I'm currently using (1.0.0). Someone may have fixed the issue since that version.
FastClick removes the ability for someone to "double click".
There are basically three scenarios:
User only has a mouse/pointer device and can activate :hover
User only has a touchscreen, and can not activate :hover elements
User has both a touchscreen and a pointer device
The originally accepted answer works great if only the first two scenarios are possible, where a user has either pointer or touchscreen. This was common when the OP asked the question 4 years ago. Several users have pointed out that Windows 8 and Surface devices are making the third scenario more likely.
The iOS solution to the problem of not being able to hover on touchscreen devices (as detailed by #Zenexer) is clever, but can cause straightforward code to misbehave (as noted by the OP). Disabling hover only for touchscreen devices means that you will still need to code a touchscreen friendly alternative. Detecting when a user has both pointer and touchscreen further muddies the waters (as explained by #Simon_Weaver).
At this point, the safest solution is to avoid using :hover as the only way a user can interact with your website. Hover effects are a good way of indicating that a link or button is actionable, but a user should not be required to hover an element to perform an action on your website.
Re-thinking “hover” functionality with touchscreens in mind has a good discussion about alternative UX approaches. The solutions provided by the answer there include:
Replacing hover menus with direct actions (always visible links)
Replacing on-hover menus with on-tap menus
Moving large amounts of on-hover content into a separate page
Moving forward, this will probably be the best solution for all new projects. The accepted answer is probably the second best solution, but be sure to account for devices that also have pointer devices. Be careful not to eliminate functionality when a device has a touchscreen just to work around iOS's :hover hack.
The JQuery version
in your .css use
.no-touch .my-element:hover
for all your hover rules
include JQuery and the following script
function removeHoverState(){
$("body").removeClass("no-touch");
}
Then in body tag add
class="no-touch" ontouchstart="removeHoverState()"
as soon as the ontouchstart fires the class for all hover states is removed
I agree disabling hover for touch is the way to go.
However, to save yourself the trouble of re-writing your css, just wrap any :hover items in #supports not (-webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch) {}
.hover, .hover-iOS {
display:inline-block;
font-family:arial;
background:red;
color:white;
padding:5px;
}
.hover:hover {
cursor:pointer;
background:green;
}
.hover-iOS {
background:grey;
}
#supports not (-webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch) {
.hover-iOS:hover {
cursor:pointer;
background:blue;
}
}
<input type="text" class="hover" placeholder="Hover over me" />
<input type="text" class="hover-iOS" placeholder="Hover over me (iOS)" />
Instead of only having hover effects when touch is not available I created a system for handling touch events and that has solved the problem for me. First, I defined an object for testing for "tap" (equivalent to "click") events.
touchTester =
{
touchStarted: false
,moveLimit: 5
,moveCount: null
,isSupported: 'ontouchend' in document
,isTap: function(event)
{
if (!this.isSupported) {
return true;
}
switch (event.originalEvent.type) {
case 'touchstart':
this.touchStarted = true;
this.moveCount = 0;
return false;
case 'touchmove':
this.moveCount++;
this.touchStarted = (this.moveCount <= this.moveLimit);
return false;
case 'touchend':
var isTap = this.touchStarted;
this.touchStarted = false;
return isTap;
default:
return true;
}
}
};
Then, in my event handler I do something like the following:
$('#nav').on('click touchstart touchmove touchend', 'ul > li > a'
,function handleClick(event) {
if (!touchTester.isTap(event)) {
return true;
}
// touch was click or touch equivalent
// nromal handling goes here.
});
Thanks #Morgan Cheng for the answer, however I've slightly modified the JS function for getting the "touchstart" (code taken from #Timothy Perez answer), though, you need jQuery 1.7+ for this
$(document).on({ 'touchstart' : function(){
//do whatever you want here
} });
Given the response provided by Zenexer, a pattern that requires no additional HTML tags is:
jQuery('a').on('mouseover', function(event) {
event.preventDefault();
// Show and hide your drop down nav or other elem
});
jQuery('a').on('click', function(event) {
if (jQuery(event.target).children('.dropdown').is(':visible') {
// Hide your dropdown nav here to unstick
}
});
This method fires off the mouseover first, the click second.
For those with common use case of disabling :hover events on iOS Safari, the simplest way is to use a min-width media query for your :hover events which stays above the screen width of the devices you are avoiding. Example:
#media only screen and (min-width: 1024px) {
.my-div:hover { // will only work on devices larger than iOS touch-enabled devices. Will still work on touch-enabled PCs etc.
background-color: red;
}
}
For someone still looking for a solution if none of the above worked,
Try this,
#media (hover: hover)
{
.Link:hover
{
color:#00d8fe;
}
}
This hover pseudo will only be applied for devices with pointers and works normal on touch devices with just .active classes.
Just look at the screen size....
#media (min-width: 550px) {
.menu ul li:hover > ul {
display: block;
}
}
heres the code you'll want to place it in
// a function to parse the user agent string; useful for
// detecting lots of browsers, not just the iPad.
function checkUserAgent(vs) {
var pattern = new RegExp(vs, 'i');
return !!pattern.test(navigator.userAgent);
}
if ( checkUserAgent('iPad') ) {
// iPad specific stuff here
}

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