Touch Event Support for jQuery UI
Tested on iPad, iPhone, Android and other touch-enabled mobile devices.
jQuery UI Touch Punch is a small hack that enables the use of touch events on sites using the jQuery UI user interface library.
Currently, jQuery UI user interface library does not support the use of touch events in their widgets and interactions. This means that the slick UI you designed and tested in your desktop browser will fail on most, if not all, touch-enabled mobile devices, becuase jQuery UI listens to mouse events—mouseover, mousemove and mouseout—not touch events—touchstart, touchmove and touchend.
That’s where jQuery UI Touch Punch comes in. Touch Punch works by using simulated eventsto map touch events to their mouse event analogs. Simply include the script on your page and your touch events will be turned into their corresponding mouse events to which jQuery UI will respond as expected.
As I said, Touch Punch is a hack. It duck punches some of jQuery UI’s core functionality to handle the mapping of touch events. Touch Punch works with all basic implementations of jQuery UI’s interactions and widgets. However, you may find more complex cases where Touch Punch fails. If so, scroll down to learn how you can file and/or fix issues.
This code is dual licensed under the MIT or GPL Version 2 licenses and is therefore free to use, modify and/or distribute, but if you include Touch Punch in other software packages or plugins, please include an attribution to the original software and a link to this Touch Punch website.