Question

I am currently experiencing some issues with some touch detection in a plugin i am using.

The plugin uses the following code

touch = ("ontouchstart" in window) || window.DocumentTouch && document instanceof DocumentTouch;
eventType = (touch) ? "touchend" : "click";

To determine if it should use touchend or click event on some gallery navigation.

However unfortunately when accessing the page using a Blackberry 9300 running os 6.0 its falsely reported as being a touch enabled device and event doesn’t fire.

I’ve checked the detection method used and its the same as the one in Modernizr.

Does anyone have a solution to this issue?

Answer 1

According to Paul Irish, RIM said this about the issue:

Unfortunately, we had a build system issue during BlackBerry 6.0 that caused builds to have WebKit touch support enabled, even for non-touch devices. It’s long been fixed, but some public builds do have this issue.

See these (currently open) tickets at github/Modernizr for possible work-arounds and the lastest detection code and then try to alter your plugin as needed. You might need to specifically detect blackberry if the latest detection code below doesn’t work.

• https://github.com/Modernizr/Modernizr/issues/372
• https://github.com/Modernizr/Modernizr/issues/548

Also check this touch test out, the browserscope tab indicates blackberry 9000 has been detected as false, so worth a shot to test it in your device too. http://modernizr.github.com/Modernizr/touch.html

The latest modernizr source for the touch detect appears to have an addition of an @media detection in addition to your code you posted.

/*
 * The Modernizr.touch test only indicates if the browser supports
 *    touch events, which does not necessarily reflect a touchscreen
 *    device, as evidenced by tablets running Windows 7 or, alas,
 *    the Palm Pre / WebOS (touch) phones.
 *
 * Additionally, Chrome (desktop) used to lie about its support on this,
 *    but that has since been rectified: crbug.com/36415
 *
 * We also test for Firefox 4 Multitouch Support.
 *
 * For more info, see: modernizr.github.com/Modernizr/touch.html
 */

tests['touch'] = function() {
    var bool;

    if(('ontouchstart' in window) || window.DocumentTouch && document instanceof DocumentTouch) {
      bool = true;
    } else {
      injectElementWithStyles(['@media (',prefixes.join('touch-enabled),('),mod,')','{#modernizr{top:9px;position:absolute}}'].join(''), function( node ) {
        bool = node.offsetTop === 9;
      });
    }

    return bool;
};

BlackBerry/PlayBook UA sniffing

To specifically detect a BlackBerry devices using the user agent string and borrowing from solutions given from here and here I whipped up this little function which you can test and see working on jsbin at http://jsbin.com/aliwur/1/edit#javascript,live and it should parse out Blackberry 5.0/4.0/6.0 and Playbook from the user agent strings:

function rim_useragent_parser(ua) {

    var info = false,
        model = null,
        model_number = null,
        os_version = null;

    if (ua.indexOf("BlackBerry") >= 0) {
        if (ua.indexOf("Version/") >= 0) {
            // BlackBerry 6 and 7
            model = ua.match(/BlackBerry\s[0-9]*/);
            if (model) {
                model_number = model[0].match(/[0-9]+/);
                pos = ua.indexOf("Version/") + 8;
                os_version = ua.substring(pos, pos + 3);
                info = {
                    'model' : model[0],
                    'model_number' : model_number[0],
                    'os_version' : os_version
                };
            }
        }
        else {
            // BlackBerry Device Software 4.2 to 5.0
            model = ua.match(/^BlackBerry[0-9]*/);
            if (model) {
                model_number = model[0].match(/[0-9]+/);
                var SplitUA = ua.split("/");
                os_version = SplitUA[1].substring(0, 3);
                info = {
                    'model' : model[0],
                    'model_number' : model_number[0],
                    'os_version' : os_version
                };
            }
        }
    }
    else if (ua.indexOf("PlayBook") >= 0) {
        // PlayBook
        model = ua.match(/RIM Tablet OS\s[0-9].[0-9].[0-9]/);
        if (model) {
            model_number = model[0].match(/[0-9].[0-9].[0-9]/);
            pos = ua.indexOf("Version/") + 8;
            os_version = ua.substring(pos, pos + 5);
            info = {
                'model' : model[0],
                'model_number' : model_number[0],
                'os_version' : os_version
            };
        }
    }

    return info;

}

Of course that might be more then you need so to simplify it to only “Blackberry 9300 6.0” I guess you could also just do this:

var ua = navigator.userAgent;
if (ua.indexOf("BlackBerry") >= 0) {
    if (ua.indexOf("Version/") >= 0) {
        // BlackBerry 6 and 7
        var model = ua.match(/BlackBerry\s[0-9]*/);
        if (model) {
            var model_number = model[0].match(/[0-9]+/);
            if (model_number) model_number = model_number[0];
            pos = ua.indexOf("Version/") + 8;
            os_version = ua.substring(pos, pos + 3);

            if (os_version === '6.0' && model_number === '9300') {
                // do what you need specifically for this
            }
        }
    }
}

For a better all purpose User Agent parsing see ua-parser

https://github.com/tobie/ua-parser/