Re: [mediaqueries4] pointer: coarse and pannable, zoomable viewports

On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 12:38 PM, Sylvain Galineau
<sylvaing@microsoft.com> wrote:
> [Tab Atkins Jr.:]
>> > The UA picks the lowest resolution pointer available, right? A Surface
>> > with its type cover or a laptop with a touch screen have both coarse and
>> fine pointers.
>>
>> We've had similar internal discussion, for what to do if you've got a
>> laptop with both a touchpad (fine) and a touchscreen (coarse).  Our rough
>> consensus was that the device chooses whichever one it expects the user to
>> most often use.
>
> I really have no idea how the device would know which one to pick, and that
> sounds disturbing to me: when the device's expectation changes then my app
> layout would suddenly reflow?
>
> Granted, matching the least precise pointer available implies anything with
> a touch screen would only ever apply touch-oriented layout and styling; but
> though those may make somewhat less efficient use of the viewport such UIs
> work fine with a mouse-like pointer and it seems better than making apps
> or sites arbitrarily reflow while they're being used...

Compare this to today's world, where in the "best" case you decide
whether to do touch or mouse stuff based on a combination of
user-agent and device-size detection, and new devices generally get
sorted semi-randomly into one of the categories.

With this, though it may not be able to give the best answer every
time, it most circumstances it can (as there's only a single interface
method).  Maybe we can extend the feature to handle mixed-interface
devices better?  I'm not sure how to, off the top of my head.

~TJ

Received on Wednesday, 12 December 2012 21:03:19 UTC