touchend event in ios webkit not firing?

Question

I'm trying to implement a menu for a ios webkit based app in which the user touches/clicks and holds a menu button ('.menu_item'), after 500ms the sub menu opens (div.slide_up_sub_menu), and a user should be able to slide their finger/mouse up to a submenu li item and release.

    <li class="menu_item">
       ASSET MANAGEMENT
       <div class="slide_up_sub_menu hidden_menu">
         <ul class="submenu">
           <li>Unified Naming Convention</li>
           <li>Version Control</li>
         </ul>
       </div>
    </li>

The application should then be able to detect which submenu item the touchend/mouseup event happened on. I'm binding a touchstart event to the menu item, waiting for 500ms, and afterwards telling the submenu to show. When a user releases their finger a touchend event should fire closing the submenu. If the user has stopped their touch on a submenu item it should be detected. Currently detection of which submenu item a mouseup event happened on works in Safari on the desktop:

$('ul.submenu li').live('mouseup', function(e){
   console.log($(e.currentTarget)); //works on the desktop
});

but if I do the same using a touchend handler it doesn't work on an ipad:

$('ul.submenu li').live('touchend', function(e){
   console.log($(e.currentTarget)); //never fires
});

if I look for every touchend event I can get a reference to the parent sub menu item when I end the touch on a submenu item:

$(document.body).bind('touchend', function(e) {
    console.log($(e.target).html()); //logs ASSET MANAGEMENT
 });

but no reference to the submenu item.

Does anyone have any idea why a touchend event is not being fired on the submenu items?

Thanks

Answer 1

touchend does not fire because touchcancel has fired earlier. If you want full touch evens handling you need to call

e.preventDefault()

in the callback of "touchmove" event, otherwise when a touchmove event occurs if the browser decides that this is a scroll event it will fire touchcancel and never fire touchend.