IPad – How to view mouse-over text with an iPad

Try editing the NetBeans source code. I'm not an expert on Java GUIs, but there should be a setCursor() function you can put into onHover or something like that. Check the documentation of the GUI toolkit NetBeans uses.

(@tubedogg, Chrome doesn't use a native GUI. Although it tries its best to use the OS look, the title bar is custom, which you can't do with Apple's native GUI toolkit.)

If only master yoda had an account here, he might say "tap or tap not, only jedi can hover" since the implementation details quickly delve into where web technology meets human interaction design.

Going down that rabbit hole a bit, ^{he might also point that good web developers know about the TouchEvent class in Safari that can discern a touchstart multitouch event from a touchend/touchcancel/touchmove interaction and perhaps be used to provide additional feedback based on the idea that touching a target would have a visible effect on the web page's contents.}

It's generally bad design to expect touch to mirror a mouse centric model, but that doesn't mean this particular site's design is wrong. Just think hard before assuming there's a simple way to design for touch than depends on simulated mouseover events.