Proper support for Pen/Touch input

[drkhn]

Preface

Firefox lacks in many aspects Chromium does very well regarding handling of Pen/Touch Input, Tablet PC UX. This needs to change for good. Over the past five years, annual sale of touchscreen laptops have risen from estimated 17% to 25%. Tablet PC form factor and touchscreen laptops are ever increasingly becoming more popular. Next MacBook is rumored to release with a touchscreen which could make the trend accelerate further. Firefox is not prepared.

List of Issues I have Observed

- DND (Drag 'n Drop) Support

• Can't drag tabs, sidebar separator/divider line, downloaded items from download menu 
• https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1692072

- Can't select text by dragging while holding down pen/stylus right click (barrel) button

• This is a platform behavior that's not supported by Firefox, but is supported by Chromium
• "Selection with pen. We also revised selection with pen by giving it more control over the selection process. Not only are we showing selection grippers whenever text is selected via pen, but also are allowing for a consistent and fast selection of content – text, objects, or ink—by dragging the pen while the barrel button is pressed." (https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2017/06/08/announcing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-162...)

- Flick gestures can't be activated with Pen/Touch input

• History Back/Forward flick (swipe) gestures that are available to trackpads are not available for pen/stylus, touchscreen usage.

  

- Pinch to zoom is not as polished as Chromium implements

• Pinch to zoom using touchscreen on Firefox feels as if your finger movements correspond to sliding vertical/horizontal scrollbars to move webpage instead of directly moving the content like a dragging motion (i.e. Direct Manipulation). The zoom gesture needs refinements to match Chromium implementation.
• I have observed that some software (e.g. Tablet Pro Zoom) which add system wide custom touchscreen gestures interfere with Firefox's zoom gesture so as to make it not function at all whilst the same doesn't happen on Chromium browser.

- Some of the buttons in Screenshot UI are not clickable with Pen/Touch input

[Jon]

Thanks for submitting an idea to the Mozilla Connect community! Your idea is now open to votes (aka kudos) and comments.

[ely_]

Also text input using a pen tablet is not working.

[azzip]

please add the go back touch gesture to Firefox. it works with two fingers on the touchpad but one finger swipe from the left edge does not go back on touch screen laptops/tablets. Chrome has had this implementation for years now.

[yukine]

I completely agree with this proposal. Currently, Firefox on Windows fails to deliver the baseline pen and touch experience that users naturally expect from modern browsers and OS platforms.

Across Android (including Android Firefox), iOS, and Windows Chromium browsers (as well as native WinUI 3 apps), fluid touch interactions, intuitive gesture navigation, and proper OSK handling have long been standard features. In contrast, Firefox on Windows falls well behind these expected industry standards in several critical ways:

• Touch-scroll physics & momentum: On long pages, consecutive swipes fail to accumulate velocity or accelerate momentum. Compared to Chromium, scrolling feels unnaturally heavy and unresponsive to fast flicking.

• Inertia calculations: Direct screen touch inertia relies too heavily on the velocity at the exact moment of finger release, often truncating the momentum instead of applying smooth physics.

• Frame rate instability & frame drops: Touch interactions—especially pinch-to-zoom—frequently suffer from stuttering and unstable frame rates. Interestingly, Firefox on Android does not exhibit this issue and handles touch smoothly, highlighting this as a specific defect in the Windows implementation.

• On-Screen Keyboard & Viewport Handling: When focusing an input field, Firefox improperly forces a full OS-level browser window resize (as highlighted in issues like Bug 1907766). Modern browsers (including Chromium and mobile OSs) keep the application window size fixed and simply scroll the focused element into view within the viewport.

Conclusion: Touch and pen input are no longer niche edge cases—they are standard input methods across 2-in-1s and tablet PCs. By failing to match the baseline experience offered by Chromium and mobile platforms (or even its own Android browser), Firefox risks becoming entirely disconnected from modern touch-enabled Windows hardware.

I strongly urge the Mozilla team to prioritize bringing Windows Pen/Touch support up to modern industry standards. Thank you for raising this essential proposal!