mouseover / hover emulation needed on Android for many websites
Many websites use menus which open up on mouseover / hover over a button. Those menus are not accessible in Firefox for Android (tested with Firefox 31 on Android 4.4.4) because there's no way to trigger a mouseover.
Example websites:
https://addons.mozilla.org The "$USERNAME" menu when logged in isn't accessible. When clicking it, it opens up for half a second but then the site reloads and the menu is gone again. The "Tools" menu (also when logged in) and the "Other Applications" menu act a little different. Clicking them triggers an unnecessary site reload but afterwards they stay opened.
https://www.schiffszimmerer.de Menus on the top like "Mitgliederservice" are not accessible.
This has already been asked twice but never really answered. https://support.mozilla.org/de/questions/982802 https://support.mozilla.org/de/questions/930854
This is NOT about what's handled in this bug. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=461854
Dolphin Browser solved it this way. Instead off just clicking you move your finger just a few millimeters and it triggers mouse-over instead. Would love that on Firefox aswell.
In Chrome for Android (Chrome 36.0.1985.128 on Android 4.4.4) you can long-press such a menu-button. That brings up the websites menu and the standard Chrome menu (open in new tab, save link, ...) at the same time, with the Chrome menu staying in foreground. But after pressing the "back" key on my phone or just tapping somewhere else on the screen the Chrome menu closes and I can access the opened up websites menu.
All Replies (4)
This is a website issue.
Hover support is not possible using a touchscreen as your finger is either in contact with the screen or not. If your finger is touching the screen a touch event is sent not a mouse event.
The greater web community is looking to provide a unified method of events related to mouse, touch, pen, etc. called Pointer events. I don't think Mozilla would implement the slide hack, it is not standards based.
If it's a website issue, please fix it on
Nevertheless, if it's bad website behavior or not, other mobile browsers handle this issue (as described before). There are some websites out there with this problem and so I and probably a lot of other people are being constantly forced to use another mobile browser because of this.
Please consider to implement it the way Chrome and Dolphin for Android are handling it!
A lot of the time the website itself needs to implement another set of events for their buttons when the user is running on a touch screen. A lot of websites do simulate a hover event when the user "holds" the button for just a bit. Since smartphones don't know when you are hovering over the screen the best that can be done is the creator of the website makes a good mobile version of their site.
Please read through the suggestion I made. Other mobile Android browsers already handle this issue in an acceptable way!
I'd like to see this behavior in Firefox for Android too.