Dealing With The Lack of "HOVER" on Smart Phone Web Apps

Question

I made this CardTrick back in 2006, at a time when it would have been predominantly accessed via a desktop computer (and not a smart phone).

On a desktop computer, as the mouse hovers over any card, the whole "row of cards" is highlighted to give clear indication of which row that card belongs to and to imply that the whole row will be selected upon clicking.

On a smart phone, this hover event probably never occurs.

My current idea, to address this, is to use setInterval, so that this hover-highlighting-of-rows happens automatically in a repeating cycle until the user picks a particular row. However, I'm interested in your thoughts regarding this idea and am open to other suggestions for emphasizing the rows to be selected.

Answer 1

Are you able to re-evaluate and build a responsive design that adapts to mobile with more substantial layout changes? If so, you can avoid the hover problem altogether by building a layout and adding copy that speaks to a touch experience.

Here is an (incomplete) example of a mobile design that replaces the rows with stacks. The cards in the stacks overlap so they feel less independent, and the copy is updated.