Triggering HTML5 DnD via a touch screen

Hi,
Chromium has experimental support for triggering the HTML5 DnD APIs
using a touchscreen (instead of just with a mouse), and we're
considering enabling this by default soon (http://crbug.com/168162).
This doesn't involve any changes to the API or semantics, and what
pointing device is being used is transparent to the application.

Before we enable this by default, I'd like to hear thoughts from the
community, especially from other browser implementers.  The spec
(http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/editing.html#dnd) was
clearly written to be agnostic to the input device (although it
describes the mouse scenario pretty clearly as an example).  Still I
figure it's worth discussing whether touch activation of the DnD APIs
is something all the major browsers see as reasonable.  Any concerns?

In Chromium drag is initiated by long press (if the touch events
aren't consumed by the application), but that's a UI design detail
that could vary between browsers and potentially different versions of
browsers.  I don't think it's worth getting into the UX issues of
exactly how drag should be initiated with touch here.

I know there are some concerns with the DnD API (eg.
http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2009/09/the_html5_drag.html),
but I consider that largely orthogonal.  We have an API that's widely
supported and is the only way to achieve important scenarios (eg.
dragging files or other content across browser windows, for example on
sites like Google Drive).  If we can come up with a compatible way to
improve the API, that's great and would automatically benefit all
input types.

Thanks,
   Rick

Received on Wednesday, 15 May 2013 07:03:09 UTC