1951447 - UserActivation.hasBeenActive stays false after swipes and long presses

Status: NEW

(Core :: DOM: UI Events & Focus Handling, defect)

Description

[carlos]

The HTML standard specifies userActivation to be given on pointerdown and pointerup. See:
https://html.spec.whatwg.org/#activation-triggering-input-event

However in Mozilla Firefox today, the userActivation is not given when touching down and holding it for a short time. Neither is userActivation given when touching down and moving your finger a bit in a certain direction.

In both these cases both a pointerdown and pointerup event fire yet userActivation.hasBeenActive stays false.

This is troublesome for applications like https://playxylo.com/ in which a user expects to be able to play the instrument when swiping the screen. However the AudioContext API is not allowed to activate before a userActivation.

Comment 1

[Hsin-Yi Tsai (she/her) [:hsinyi]]

Dear reporter,
I don't seem to see the problem. I am able to play in https://playxylo.com/ . I was trying with Firefox 136 and nightly 138, on Win11, with my Dell touch screen. I had no problems as well with keyboard, mouse or touch pad.
Can you give more details about your machine OS and Firefox version? Do you have add-ons installed? If so, does anything change if you disable them? Thank you.

Comment 2

[carlos]

Thanks for your reply! You can reproduce it in Firefox on Android or in Touch Simulation mode on Firefox Desktop.

If you just swipe the screen, no sound is given. Unless userActivation has been given before by a normal touch on the screen. So to reproduce it you need to reload the page and only do swipes / long presses as mentioned above. During this stage no userActivation is granted and thus no sounds are played.

Let me know if there is need for additional clarification!

Comment 3

[Hsin-Yi Tsai (she/her) [:hsinyi]]

(In reply to carlos from comment #2)

Thanks for your reply! You can reproduce it in Firefox on Android or in Touch Simulation mode on Firefox Desktop.

If you just swipe the screen, no sound is given. Unless userActivation has been given before by a normal touch on the screen. So to reproduce it you need to reload the page and only do swipes / long presses as mentioned above. During this stage no userActivation is granted and thus no sounds are played.

Thank you. I confirm that I am able to reproduce this on Android.

Let me know if there is need for additional clarification!

Comment 4

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:farre, could you have a look please?

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