Looking to detect finger gestures as opposed to mouse movement

Hopefully that title didn’t confuse the issue to much but I’m trying to discover the vocabulary to describe what I’m trying to do along the way.

I’m putting together a sort of proof of concept which is really simple when looking at the world from a mouse driven point of view. I have a grid of 25 invisible rectangles and when I move my mouse over the grid, they fade in and out as the mouse enters and leaves the space. Further along I’ll use an onpress or onrelease action to open a dialog box or something similar but for now I’m struggling to make it mobile device compatible.

Here’s a link to what I’ve done so far: LINK

  • If I click on the items in an iPhone/iPad the fade in, fade out is working but I can’t figure out how to make it respond to dragging a finger across the screen.

Are there any established practices to handle this sort of thing on the mobile side? In a perfect world, I’d like it to be iPhone/Pad, Droid and Blackberry friendly but at this point it isn’t friendly to any of them as far as I can tell.

Any tips?

Thanks,