Question

I would like to recreate the swipe functionality of the ios platform. Where the user can swipe slow or fast or forward and back – without lifting the finger from the screen – and also be able to flick the finger for a really fast swipe that maybe goes on for a little while.

The built in swipe gesture is much too basic for this kind of effect.

How would you go about achieving a real swipe effect?

Answer 1

About a year Before the gestures came out I actually had to build swipe manually for a Windows based touch screen. The way I did it was add mouse down and mouse up listeners to an invisible display object that would be on top of my content. On mouse down I would record MouseX and MouseY and current milliseconds (via a Timer), then on mouse up I would check the differences and determine what kind of event it was.

I don’t remember exact values but the general idea was this:

1. flick: long or short distance, short time
2. long swipe: longer distance and longer time
3. short swipe: short distance and longer time

This method took a lot of fine tuning, and I recommend using adobe’s built in stuff as much as possible, but if you do go the manual route that is how I did it.

Another note, if you are tweening objects after a swipe event be sure to address when the user interrupts the tween and starts a new one. As I recall this got kind of hairy, but it is manageable.