iPad/iPhone hover problem causes the user to double click a link

Seems there is a CSS solution after all. The reason Safari waits for a second touch is because of the background image (or elements) you usually assign on the :hover event. If there is none to be shown - you won't have any problems. The solution is to target iOS platform with secondary CSS file (or style in case of a JS approach) which overrides :hover background to inherit for example and keep hidden the elements you were going to display on mouse over:

Here is an example CSS and HTML - a product block with a starred label on mouse over:

HTML:

<a href="#" class="s"><span class="s-star"></span>Some text here</a>

CSS:

.s {
   background: url(some-image.png) no-repeat 0 0;

}
.s:hover {
   background: url(some-image-r.png) no-repeat 0 0;
}

.s-star {
   background: url(star.png) no-repeat 0 0;
   height: 56px;
   position: absolute;
   width: 72px;
   display:none;
}

.s:hover .s-star {
   display:block;
}

Solution (secondary CSS):

/* CSS */
/* Keep hovers the same or hidden */
.s:hover {
   background:inherit;
}
.s:hover .s-star {
   display:none;
}

It is not entirely clear what your question is, but if you just want to eliminate the double click, while retaining the hover effect for the mouse, my advice is to:

• Add hover effects on touchstart and mouseenter.
• Remove hover effects on mouseleave, touchmove and click.

Background

In order to simulate a mouse, browsers such as Webkit mobile fire the following events if a user touches and releases a finger on touch screen (like iPad) (source: Touch And Mouse on html5rocks.com):

1. touchstart
2. touchmove
3. touchend
4. 300ms delay, where the browser makes sure this is a single tap, not a double tap
5. mouseover
6. mouseenter
   • Note: If a mouseover, mouseenter or mousemove event changes the page content, the following events are never fired.
7. mousemove
8. mousedown
9. mouseup
10. click

It does not seem possible to simply tell the webbrowser to skip the mouse events.

What's worse, if a mouseover event changes the page content, the click event is never fired, as explained on Safari Web Content Guide - Handling Events, in particular figure 6.4 in One-Finger Events. What exactly a "content change" is, will depend on browser and version. I've found that for iOS 7.0, a change in background color is not (or no longer?) a content change.

Solution Explained

To recap:

• Add hover effects on touchstart and mouseenter.
• Remove hover effects on mouseleave, touchmove and click.

Note that there is no action on touchend!

This clearly works for mouse events: mouseenter and mouseleave (slightly improved versions of mouseover and mouseout) are fired, and add and remove the hover.

If the user actually clicks a link, the hover effect is also removed. This ensure that it is removed if the user presses the back button in the web browser.

This also works for touch events: on touchstart the hover effect is added. It is '''not''' removed on touchend. It is added again on mouseenter, and since this causes no content changes (it was already added), the click event is also fired, and the link is followed without the need for the user to click again!

The 300ms delay that a browser has between a touchstart event and click is actually put in good use because the hover effect will be shown during this short time.

If the user decides to cancel the click, a move of the finger will do so just as normal. Normally, this is a problem since no mouseleave event is fired, and the hover effect remains in place. Thankfully, this can easily be fixed by removing the hover effect on touchmove.

That's it!

Note that it is possible to remove the 300ms delay, for example using the FastClick library, but this is out of scope for this question.

Alternative Solutions

I've found the following problems with the following alternatives:

• browser detection: Extremely prone to errors. Assumes that a device has either mouse or touch, while a combination of both will become more and more common when touch displays prolifirate.
• CSS media detection: The only CSS-only solution I'm aware of. Still prone to errors, and still assumes that a device has either mouse or touch, while both are possible.
• Emulate the click event in touchend: This will incorrectly follow the link, even if the user only wanted to scroll or zoom, without the intention of actually clicking the link.
• Use a variable to suppress mouse events: This set a variable in touchend that is used as a if-condition in subsequent mouse events to prevents state changes at that point in time. The variable is reset in the click event. This is a decent solution if you really don't want a hover effect on touch interfaces. Unfortunately, this does not work if a touchend is fired for another reason and no click event is fired (e.g. the user scrolled or zoomed), and is subsequently trying to following the link with a mouse (i.e on a device with both mouse and touch interface).

Further Reading

• http://jsfiddle.net/macfreek/24Z5M/. Test the above solution for yourself in this sandbox.
• http://www.macfreek.nl/memory/Touch_and_mouse_with_hover_effects_in_a_web_browser. This same answer, with a bit more background.
• http://www.html5rocks.com/en/mobile/touchandmouse/. Great background article on html5rocks.com about touch and mouse in general.
• https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/DOCUMENTATION/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariWebContent/HandlingEvents/HandlingEvents.html. Safari Web Content Guide - Handling Events. See in particular figure 6.4, which explains that no further events are fired after a content change during a mouseover or mousemove event.

See also iPad/iPhone double click problem and Disable hover effects on mobile browsers.

Haven't tested this fully but since iOS fires touch events, this could work, assuming you are in a jQuery setting.

$('a').on('click touchend', function(e) {
    var el = $(this);
    var link = el.attr('href');
    window.location = link;
});

The idea is that Mobile WebKit fires a touchend event at the end of a tap so we listen for that and then redirect the browser as soon as a touchend event has been fired on a link.

No need to make overcomplicated.

$('a').on('touchend', function() {
    $(this).click();
});