6 ms·

More Responsive Tapping on iOS

97 points by cheeaun 11y ago

TruthSHIFT 11y ago
This sounds awesome. When are these changes coming to iOS?
- Sheepsteak 11y ago
  Probably in iOS 10 next September I would have thought.
andy_ppp 11y ago
Fantastic! Now if you could fix sending us the scrollTop accurately during momentum scrolling (inside requestAnimationFrame is fine) that would be amazing!
nipponese 11y ago
Why did it take eight years to implement this work around? This would have been useful in 2007 after SJ, himself, told us to make web apps in leu native apps for the then non-existent App Store.
- smackfu 11y ago
  If you double-tap on a fixed-width viewport page in iOS Safari today, it scrolls the page so the content you tapped is centered. The blog post doesn't mention this, but obviously they need to remove that behavior if they are no long detecting double-taps. Maybe it was good for accessibility?
  - geon 11y ago
    TFA says it only affects mobile-optimized layouts, and only on form elements and links.
jordanlev 11y ago
Standard accessibility disclaimer to people developing websites: please do not set "user-scalable=no" in the viewport meta tag, as this prevents users from pinch-zooming the page. Many designers think "there's no need to allow zooming", but this is often coming from people who are blessed with youth and/or great eye-sight. A lot of people (especially as we get older) need to be able to zoom in to read things, or we just want to zoom in on images to be able to see more detail (especially graphics that have text in them). Fortunately, you don't need to set "user-scalable=no" in order to reap the benefits of the "no tap delay" (thank you to the webkit team for hearing people's feedback about this and changing course from their original plan which was to only disable tap delay when page wasn't scalable).
- untog 11y ago
  Most of the sites employing this are aiming at providing more "app-y" experiences, though - and apps don't allow you to zoom in that way. I'd love to see browsers allow you to tap into OS-level accessibility settings easily, and set the font size to match the OS, etc.
  - moron4hire 11y ago
    That's weird. I could have sworn it should work to avoid setting an absolute font size, but trying it just now on my Android phone (kitkat, I think) and it didn't work. Is this something I'm misremembering? I thought you could do this on desktop, at least.
  - micampe 11y ago
    iOS 9 added that https://webkit.org/blog/3709/using-the-system-font-in-web-content/ https://webkit.org/blog/3709/using-the-system-font-in-web-co...
    - untog 11y ago
      But not sizing specifically, right? It looks like I can use the system typeface but not my own typeface at system size.
untog 11y ago
Long, long overdue. While it is true that the web is slower than native apps, a lot of people's perception of slowness is directly attributable to this delay on click events.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
jyrki 11y ago
Chrome implemented this ~2 years ago, while retaining the pinch zooming. https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2013/12/300ms-tap-delay-gone-away?hl=en https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2013/12/300ms-tap-...
- om2 11y ago
  If you read the post, WebKit supports fast tap while enabling pinch zooming as well.
davidthib 11y ago
ELI5?

97 points by cheeaun 11y ago

TruthSHIFT 11y ago

This sounds awesome. When are these changes coming to iOS?

Sheepsteak 11y ago
Probably in iOS 10 next September I would have thought.

andy_ppp 11y ago

Fantastic! Now if you could fix sending us the scrollTop accurately during momentum scrolling (inside requestAnimationFrame is fine) that would be amazing!

nipponese 11y ago

Why did it take eight years to implement this work around? This would have been useful in 2007 after SJ, himself, told us to make web apps in leu native apps for the then non-existent App Store.

smackfu 11y ago
If you double-tap on a fixed-width viewport page in iOS Safari today, it scrolls the page so the content you tapped is centered. The blog post doesn't mention this, but obviously they need to remove that behavior if they are no long detecting double-taps. Maybe it was good for accessibility?
- geon 11y ago
  TFA says it only affects mobile-optimized layouts, and only on form elements and links.

jordanlev 11y ago

Standard accessibility disclaimer to people developing websites: please do not set "user-scalable=no" in the viewport meta tag, as this prevents users from pinch-zooming the page. Many designers think "there's no need to allow zooming", but this is often coming from people who are blessed with youth and/or great eye-sight. A lot of people (especially as we get older) need to be able to zoom in to read things, or we just want to zoom in on images to be able to see more detail (especially graphics that have text in them). Fortunately, you don't need to set "user-scalable=no" in order to reap the benefits of the "no tap delay" (thank you to the webkit team for hearing people's feedback about this and changing course from their original plan which was to only disable tap delay when page wasn't scalable).

untog 11y ago
Most of the sites employing this are aiming at providing more "app-y" experiences, though - and apps don't allow you to zoom in that way. I'd love to see browsers allow you to tap into OS-level accessibility settings easily, and set the font size to match the OS, etc.
- moron4hire 11y ago
  That's weird. I could have sworn it should work to avoid setting an absolute font size, but trying it just now on my Android phone (kitkat, I think) and it didn't work. Is this something I'm misremembering? I thought you could do this on desktop, at least.
- micampe 11y ago
  iOS 9 added that https://webkit.org/blog/3709/using-the-system-font-in-web-content/ https://webkit.org/blog/3709/using-the-system-font-in-web-co...
  - untog 11y ago
    But not sizing specifically, right? It looks like I can use the system typeface but not my own typeface at system size.

untog 11y ago

Long, long overdue. While it is true that the web is slower than native apps, a lot of people's perception of slowness is directly attributable to this delay on click events.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

jyrki 11y ago

Chrome implemented this ~2 years ago, while retaining the pinch zooming. https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2013/12/300ms-tap-delay-gone-away?hl=en https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2013/12/300ms-tap-...

om2 11y ago
If you read the post, WebKit supports fast tap while enabling pinch zooming as well.

davidthib 11y ago

ELI5?