Using IE10 Pointer Events to Unify Mouse, Touch, and Pen Input
Learn how IE10’s pointer events unify mouse, touch, and pen input, with a concrete code example, CSS touch‑action usage, limits, and verification steps.
11 Oct 2025, 16:04 UTC
Quick answer
In Internet Explorer 10 you can handle mouse, touch, and pen input with a single set of pointer events. By listening for pointerdown, pointermove, and pointerup (and related events) and setting -ms-touch-action: none; on the target element, you prevent default touch gestures like scrolling or zooming and get a unified event model.
How it works
IE10 implements the W3C Pointer Events specification. Each pointer event object includes a pointerType property that tells you whether the input came from a mouse, touch, or pen, plus optional properties such as pressure, tiltX, tiltY, width, and height for richer input.
Worked example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
ie10