When you have a long lists of items and you want to let the user interact with one of the items contextually - a common solution is to use the **hover-tools pattern** in a desktop browser environment. The benefit is that you don't cluttering the user interface with a lot of repetitive controls. 

The list could such as show a bunch of links and you want to save or comment one of those links. 

(The interaction design pattern is discussed here:)
<http://patternry.com/p=hover-reveal-tools/>

But, as we all know, on touch devices we don't have hover. On iOS we have the Edit button but that is usually for bulk actions and that is not what I'm after. 

**Do we have a pattern that could work for both mouse based and touch based interfaces?**