Touches are classified as mouse events

[fefrei]

On Firefox 29.0, running on Windows, with hammer.js 1.1.2, events have event.gesture.pointerType === 'mouse' even though they are caused by a touchsceen.

[MichielioZ]

Does that create any problems ?

[fefrei]

Yes - for me, it totally defeats the purpose. I'm trying to detect whether a user has a touchscreen, to display a more touch-friendly UI in that case. To do so, I'm listening to touch events on the whole window (which are fired by mouse clicks, too) and then do a if (event.gesture.pointerType === 'touch') to identify real touches.

[MichielioZ]

Did you test in other browsers if the same behaviour occurs ?
Maybe Firefox fires both events at the same time (some mobile browsers do this).
Perhaps it's possible to detect if touch events are supported outside of hammer with a seperate little script and then set hammer to use touch if available ? (just an idea, I have no (working) code here)

[fefrei]

This works fine in Chrome, Internet Explorer and Mobile Safari. Opera appears to have the same issue.
Testing if touch events are supported is pretty useless nowadays - all modern browser support them, but they don't indicate that a touchscreen is physically present.

[MichielioZ]

If you tested which events fire in different browsers and the events are the same (ie they all fire both mouse- and touch-events) but Firefox is the only one causing problems, you're probably better off filing a bug report at Firefox I think...
Good luck with the issue, as I can no longer be of use to you ;-) (have no touch monitor to test)

[fefrei]

I have no idea whether these browsers actually fire two events - I just checked the hammer.js-events, and these have the incorrect pointerType. I'm still suspecting this is a hammer.js-issue, since both Firefox and Opera have this issue (and they have different engines).

I might investigate this further if I have enough time soon. Thanks for your help :)

[fefrei]

Now with Chrome 37 and hammer.js 2.0.2, this issue also manifested itself in Chrome. So for now, pointerType is broken in Chrome and Firefox - it still works in IE, though.