11 Multi-touch and Touch events Javascript libraries

Introduction

Touch screen devices are ruling the mobile platform nowadays. Most of the smart phones have it, tablet and based on the trend, it's slowly come to our desktop as well. To develop a touch screen compatible web applications or website, you can use the existing touch events of the browsers or the platforms.

There are two ways to create a touch support app - native or using the web development technologies (HTML, CSS, Javascript). It's possible to develop an app for mobile devices using web technologies, for example, we can use third party development tools such as PhoneGap to compile a web app and make it available in different web apps. Good thing about web technology is - almost all of them support the same standard. So, this time, we have collected many javascript extension and plugins that allow you to integrate touch gestures into your mobile app. We listed out events and some other useful info just to save your time.

• QUO JS Events: Touch, Tap, Double tap, Hold, Fingers, Swipe, Swipe Up, Swipe Right, Swipe Down, Swipe Left, Drag
  Other features: Built-in jQuery-like methods. It uses $$ to avoid conflict.
  File size: 13KB minified
  Standlone: Yes
  
• Hammer JS Events: Tap, Double tap, hold, drag, transform (pinch)
  Other features: Javascript library focused only for multi-touch gestures
  File size: 2KB minified
  Standlone: Yes
  
• Touchy Events: long press, drag, pinch, rotate, swipe
  Other features: jQuery plugin for webkit browsers and browsers that support outch events
  File size: ~2.72KB minified
  Standlone: No, need jQuery framework
  
• Mootools-mobile Events: Swipe, pinch, touch hold
  Other features: Touch events are separated into different files.
  File size: -
  Standlone: No, need MooTools
  
• jQuery doubletap Events: Touch, Swipe, Tap, Double tap, Swipe left, Swipe Right, Swipe up, Swipe down
  Other features: No android support yet
  File size: 4KB
  Standlone: No, need jQuery
  
• jGestures Events: Orientation change, Pinch, Rotate, Swipe move, Swipe in multi direction, Swipe with 1,2,3 fingers, Tap with 1,2,3 fingers, pinch open, pinch close, shake in different directions
  Other features: Bundled with many gestures and useful events
  File size: 16KB minified
  Standlone: No, need jQuery
  
• Touch Swipe Events: Swipes in 4 directions, 1,2 fingers touch
  Other features: Allows swiping and page scrolling
  File size: 25KB
  Standlone: No, need jQuery
  
• Touchable Events: Tap, Long Tap, Double tap, touchable move, touchable end
  Other features: Unifies touch and mouse events
  File size: 1.96KB
  Standlone: No, need jQuery
  
• thumbs.js Events: touch start, touch end, touch end, touch move, mouse down, mouse up, mouse move
  Other features: PhoneGap and mobile web friendly
  File size: 612 bytes minified
  Standlone: Yes
  
• jQuery.pep.js Events: Drag
  Other features: Uses CSS3 animations, built-in many drag features
  File size: 16KB
  Standlone: No, need jQuery
  
• Jetster Events: Tap, Double tap, Swipe, Flick, Pinch, Pinch arrow, Pinch widen, Pinch end
  Other features: Jester makes recognising gestures on DOM elements really easy
  File size: 25KB
  Standlone: Yes
  

• TAGS:
• Javascript
• Mobile
• Plugin