--- title: A bug which only affected left-handed users | daily.dev description: A WordPress blog author discovered a bug where a comment reply box would unexpectedly appear during page scrolling — but only for left-handed users whose thumb... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/a-bug-which-only-affected-left-handed-users-yq6gswqom twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: A bug which only affected left-handed users | daily.dev og:description: A WordPress blog author discovered a bug where a comment reply box would unexpectedly appear during page scrolling — but only for left-handed users whose thumb... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/a-bug-which-only-affected-left-handed-users-yq6gswqom og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/Yq6GSwqOM.png og:image:alt: A bug which only affected left-handed users og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # A bug which only affected left-handed users **[Terence Eden](https://daily.dev/sources/shkspr)** · 3 min read · 7 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A WordPress blog author discovered a bug where a comment reply box would unexpectedly appear during page scrolling — but only for left-handed users whose thumb naturally passes over the reply link on the left side of the page. The root cause was a `touchstart` listener added to link clicks in WordPress back in 2017, originally intended to avoid a 300ms tap delay in older browsers — a problem that had already been solved years prior. The bug had been reported on WordPress core trac seven years ago with no fix. The author resolved it by deleting the unnecessary lines of code and submitted a pull request to WordPress core. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Why would WordPress's comment reply link trigger unexpectedly when scrolling on a touchscreen? A touchstart event listener was added to link clicks in WordPress core in 2017 to work around an old browser quirk where touch events couldn't be distinguished from double-tap-to-zoom gestures, causing a 300ms click delay. That workaround became obsolete after browsers fixed the delay around 2013-2015, but the listener remained, causing reply links to fire on mere scroll touches, particularly affecting left-handed users whose thumb crosses the left-aligned reply link while scrolling. _Track how legacy browser workarounds linger in codebases like WordPress by following fixes like this on daily.dev._ ### Is the 300ms tap delay still a reason to add touchstart listeners to links in web development? No, the 300ms tap delay was resolved by browsers years ago, documented in a 2013 Chrome blog post, and libraries like FastClick confirmed it was unnecessary by 2015. Adding touchstart listeners to work around it, as WordPress core did in 2017, is an outdated pattern that can introduce unintended bugs, such as triggering click behavior on scroll gestures. _Developers auditing old touch-event workarounds in their JavaScript can spot outdated patterns like this via daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Stop buttons triggering zoom when they’re double tapped](https://daily.dev/posts/stop-buttons-triggering-zoom-when-they-re-double-tapped-xoltks6sd) · Piccalilli · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [A Little Twisted](https://daily.dev/posts/a-little-twisted-fiq0iutgz) · The Daily WTF · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Don't Roll Your Own ...](https://daily.dev/posts/don-t-roll-your-own--gpx1gv2zh) · Susam Pal · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [we finally learned to center a div, then browsers added sidebars](https://daily.dev/posts/we-finally-learned-to-center-a-div-then-browsers-added-sidebars-ehrewltuh) · Hacker News · 8 upvotes · 5 comments --- Tags: [#javascript](https://daily.dev/tags/javascript), [#wordpress](https://daily.dev/tags/wordpress) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/a-bug-which-only-affected-left-handed-users-yq6gswqom) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"A bug which only affected left-handed users","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/a-bug-which-only-affected-left-handed-users-yq6gswqom","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/a-bug-which-only-affected-left-handed-users-yq6gswqom"},"datePublished":"2026-07-08T11:35:35.669Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T06:59:33.516Z","description":"A WordPress blog author discovered a bug where a comment reply box would unexpectedly appear during page scrolling — but only for left-handed users whose thumb...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--58gMhC4P--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2012","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--58gMhC4P--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2012","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Terence Eden","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Terence Eden","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--nhylgPuf--/f_auto,q_auto/v1774964413/logos/shkspr?_a=BAMAMiWQ0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/shkspr"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/a-bug-which-only-affected-left-handed-users-yq6gswqom","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":7},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"javascript,wordpress","timeRequired":"PT3M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Terence Eden","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/shkspr"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"A bug which only affected left-handed users"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/a-bug-which-only-affected-left-handed-users-yq6gswqom#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Why would WordPress's comment reply link trigger unexpectedly when scrolling on a touchscreen?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"A touchstart event listener was added to link clicks in WordPress core in 2017 to work around an old browser quirk where touch events couldn't be distinguished from double-tap-to-zoom gestures, causing a 300ms click delay. 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