IE10 APIs Used to Create Interoperable Input Events Web Standard

Internet Explorer 10, the browser that will come as default in Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 platform, has been greatly enhanced for touchscreen devices, and the company is trying to ensure that users will enjoy a great experience when accessing websites with it.

Thus, the software giant went to W3C with submissions describing new ways for Web sites to support multiple pointing devices such as mouse, pen, and multi-touch, and notes that its proposition has already been accepted and published.

The new Pointer Events Web standard has been proposed based on the new set of APIs that were made available for the Internet Explorer 10 browser in Windows 8.

“The Web is more exciting and interactive for users when sites enable experiences for multi-touch. It is even better when the same site continues to work if you switch to using a mouse or pen,” Adrian Bateman and Jacob Rossi, program managers, Internet Explorer, note in a blog post.

“We believe the Web should not be fragmented into sites designed for only one type of input. We designed Pointer Events to make it easier for developers to avoid this fragmentation by abstracting the differences of input devices while still allowing for device-specific enhancements when desired.”

Microsoft will work with other browser vendors and with the Web community to push the adoption of the new approach to multi-touch input forth.

Moreover, the company notes that the goal is to ensure that web developers will have to write only to one pointer input model, regardless of whether they are aiming for the use of mouse, pen, or touch.

“This Submission comes at a time of significant developer concern about creating content that works well on multiple input modalities, and in light of some disadvantages to the touch event model currently under standardization,” the W3C said.

While other approaches require developers to write code for both mouse input and for touch, the new Pointer Events model is meant to offer compatibility with the existing web, and to eliminate complexities created by interactions between the two aforementioned models.

Those who would like to have a look at the new Pointer Events Web standard should head over to the W3C website.