What is a Tooltip?
A tooltip is a small, boxed text message that pops up when a mouse cursor hovers over a toolbar icon in a software program. The tooltip is typically a one-or-two-word reminder of what the tool does. For example, in Microsoft™ Word™ running the mouse cursor over the scissors icon on the top toolbar produces the tooltip “Cut,” while passing it over the clipboard icon produces “Paste.” Tooltips are handy when a program is new because they help familiarize the user with toolbar shortcuts. Tooltips are also utilized in graphic user interfaces (GUIs) to help explain controls. This is commonly found in gaming interfaces and in virtual music or video decks. Rolling the cursor over each control will reveal what the control does. Another place you might see a tooltip is on the Web. Images can have accompanying text boxes that might say “click here for a larger image” or in some cases a tooltip might give the viewer information about the image. These popup text boxes are also activated by a curso
When a user moves the mouse pointer over an element that has a tooltip, a window that contains tooltip content (for example, text content that describes the function of a control) appears for a specified amount of time. If the user moves the mouse pointer away from the control, the window disappears because the tooltip content cannot receive focus. The content of a tooltip can contain one or more lines of text, images, shapes, or other visual content. You define a tooltip for a control by setting one of the following properties to the tooltip content.
This is a tooltip an aiding text that appears just when you roll on with the mouse. The basic idea comes from Eric Meyer’s pure css popupsa very clever way to get dynamic effects on an html page without using javascript. My idea was to add position:relative to the link, in order to allow the span element inside to position absolutely respect the parent link. This code has been tested in Ie5.5, Opera7.11 and Mozilla 1.4 and works fine. Solved ie bug adding some z-index, but with the modifications done this technique will be buggy in Opera7.2 .
