W3C Pointer Events Gains Further Web Momentum with Patch For Mozilla Firefox

Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc., (MS Open Tech) has made another contribution towards interoperable support for Pointer Events across Web platforms by publishing an early open source prototype of the W3C Pointer Events Candidate Recommendation for Mozilla Firefox. This patch contribution advances the momentum around use of Pointer Events to build interoperable web sites that work with mouse, touch, and pen.

The W3C Pointer Events emerging standard makes it easier to support many browsers and devices by saving Web developers from writing unique code for each input type. Pointer Events unifies how you code for point, click and touch across multiple devices.

Previously, MS Open Tech announced further interoperable support for Pointer Events in Blink by submitting a formal Intent to Implement to enable our engineering team to actively collaborate and work toward a positive adoption of Pointer Events by the Blink developer community. Earlier this year, MS Open Tech published Pointer Events prototypes for WebKit on HTML5 Labs and submitted patches to the WebKit developer forum. Our previous Blogs have discussed Pointer Events adoption in Internet Explorer, Chrome/Blink, and in JavaScript libraries such as jQuery, and Dojo. This initial open source patch for Mozilla Firefox adds to the Web community convergence around the Pointer Events specification and we plan to continue our collaboration with the Blink, WebKit and Mozilla communities.

MS Open Tech and the Microsoft Internet Explorer teams will continue to work with our colleagues across the industry, engaging developers to test and provide feedback on the specification to W3C.

Contribute to the New Pointer Events Functionality in Firefox

We encourage interested developers to participate in the community process and provide feedback to ensure that Mozilla Firefox will enable a great Pointer Events implementation. As you start building, migrating, or testing your Web apps using Pointer Events, you should check out the resources available on the Pointer Events Wiki at Web Platform Docs:

Jump in, have fun with the demos, join the discussion at #PointerEvents and update your site with the cool capabilities of Pointer Events. Point. Click. Touch.

Asir Vedamuthu Selvasingh, Principal Program Manager
Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc.

Adalberto Foresti, Principal Program Manager
Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc.

Oleg Romashin, Senior Engineer, Microsoft Open Technologies Hub