# Cannot grow/shrink composition pane with touch

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/cannot-grow-shrink-composition-pane-with-touch/53316
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [November 23, 2016, 10:00pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cannot-grow-shrink-composition-pane-with-touch/53316 "2016-11-23T22:00:30Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![barryvan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/barryvan/32/82635_2.png) [@barryvan](https://meta.discourse.org/u/barryvan)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2016, 10:00pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cannot-grow-shrink-composition-pane-with-touch/53316/1 "2016-11-23T22:00:30Z")

</div>

On my Surface, I can’t grow or shrink the composer area using touch – it’s interpreted as a scroll of the content below.

My guess is that this is because on the “desktop” version of Discourse, only mouse events are handled. Rather than _also_ handle touch events, is it worthwhile moving Discourse to [pointer events](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Pointer_events) such that any current and future pointing devices will Just Work™? The jQuery team have a [non-jQuery polyfill](https://github.com/jquery/PEP) for pointer events.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![zogstrip](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/zogstrip/32/512781_2.png) [@zogstrip](https://meta.discourse.org/u/zogstrip)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2016, 11:11pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cannot-grow-shrink-composition-pane-with-touch/53316/2 "2016-11-23T23:11:00Z")

</div>

> [@barryvan](#):
>
> is it worthwhile moving Discourse to pointer events such that any current and future pointing devices will Just Work™?

While we tend to always be on the bleeding edge, we need [more adoption](http://caniuse.com/#search=pointer%20event) 😉

 ![](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/b/e/be1bb95b80f6a1df59eda2f26527e24a02d0de0f.png)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![Mittineague](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/mittineague/32/114259_2.png) [@Mittineague](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mittineague)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2016, 11:56pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cannot-grow-shrink-composition-pane-with-touch/53316/3 "2016-11-23T23:56:22Z")

</div>

> [@zogstrip](#):
>
> need more adoption

Agreed. Although there are many promising changes in the works, I don’t think it’s a good idea to expect users to go into their about:config, chrome://flags or equivalent and mess with settings.

Not to say that developers aware of possible consequences can’t do some testing in anticipation of broader browser adoption.

> Pointer Events Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS, Android  
> Enables experimental support for the Pointer Events API. This is intended only for testing by web developers, may cause some websites to be subtly broken. #enable-pointer-events

---

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![barryvan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/barryvan/32/82635_2.png) [@barryvan](https://meta.discourse.org/u/barryvan)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2016, 1:12am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cannot-grow-shrink-composition-pane-with-touch/53316/4 "2016-11-24T01:12:32Z")

</div>

> [@Mittineague](#):
>
> I don’t think it’s a good idea to expect users to go into their about:config, chrome://flags or equivalent and mess with settings.

To be fair, this isn’t what I’m advocating – rather, I’m suggesting the use of a polyfill like the jQuery team’s PEP (linked above). This would work in _all_ browsers, regardless of their support for pointer events (or not).