To answer your main question: “How do I simulate a hover with a touch in touch enabled browsers?”
Simply allow ‘clicking’ the element (by tapping the screen), and then trigger the hover
event using JavaScript.
var p = document.getElementsByTagName('p')[0];
p.onclick = function() {
// Trigger the `hover` event on the paragraph
p.onhover.call(p);
};
This should work, as long as there’s a hover
event on your device (even though it normally isn’t used).
Update: I just tested this technique on my iPhone and it seems to work fine. Try it out here: http://jsfiddle.net/mathias/YS7ft/show/light/
If you want to use a ‘long touch’ to trigger hover instead, you can use the above code snippet as a starting point and have fun with timers and stuff ;)