More W3C Pointer Events Implementations with Dojo and IE11

The W3C Pointer Events emerging standard continues to gain traction, advancing support for interoperable mouse, touch, and pen interactions across the web. Further to our previous Blog where we highlighted the work the Dojo team are doing with Pointer Events, we can now confirm an implementation of Pointer Events has now been added to the patch list for Dojo Toolkit 2.0.

Pointer Events makes it easier to support a variety of browsers and devices by saving Web developers from writing unique code for each input type. The specification has earned positive feedback from the developer community -- many are already embracing it as a unified model for cross-browser multi-modal input.

In our previous Blog on W3C Pointer Events, we highlighted feedback shared by members of the jQuery, Cordova, and Dojo communities. The team at Nokia are also excited about progress with the Pointer Events standardization work as Nokia's Art Barstow, Chair of the W3C's Pointer Events Working Group noted:

Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, jQuery, Opera and Nokia are among the industry members working on the Pointer Events standard in the W3C's Pointer Events Working Group. Pointer Events is designed to handle hardware-agnostic multi user inputs input from devices like a mouse, pen, or touchscreen and we are pleased to see it achieve Candidate Recommendation status in W3C. Pointer Events is a great way for developers to enable better user interaction with the mobile Web and we are excited to see the various implementations around the Web that are already underway. Web developers can start coding with Pointer Events today and we look forward to further progress with the standard and adoption within the Web community.

Pointer Events at //Build 2013

During the recent //Build 2013 event, Jacob Rossi of the Internet Explorer (IE) team presented Lighting Your Site Up on Windows 8.1 which included guidance on how Web developers can use the capabilities of Pointer Events to make web sites ‘shine’ across many devices such as touch/mouse/pen, high resolution screens, and screen sizes from phones to desktops, taking advantage of sensors and other hardware innovations. The Internet Explorer 11 Preview implementation has been updated from Internet Explorer 10 to include the latest Candidate Recommendation specification for W3C Pointer Events - see Pointer Events updates in the IE11 Developer Guide for further details.

As we continue to work with the vibrant Web community, we look forward to seeing even more Pointer Events support across a growing number of JavaScript libraries and frameworks – there’s more to come! To learn more about using and implementing Pointer Events, feel free to check out and contribute to the Pointer Events Wiki on Web Platform Docs which includes community generated polyfills, tests, demos, and tutorials, or join the discussion at #PointerEvents. Point. Click. Touch.