Tuesday, November 29th, 2005
Tooltip.js: Creating simple tooltips
Category: JavaScript
, Toolkit, UI, Usability
Tooltip.js is a simple library that builds on top of Prototype and Script.aculo.us.
You can create tooltips programatically, or just by using special CSS classes.
CSS Styling Tooltips
The most simple example is to add a div with the class of tooltip immediately after the item that you wish to activate a tooltip. E.g.
<p>Click this to show the tooltip</p> <div class='tooltip'> <h1>Header</h1> <p>Contents</p> </div>
Since this is just a div, you can put anything you want in it. You can also create custom activators and such. E.g.
<p><img src="images/dvd.jpg" alt="DVD Cover"></p>
<div style="opacity: 0.999999;" class="netflix tooltip" id="tt3">
<h1>Star Wars: Episode III</h1>
<p>In the third and final installment of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, Anakin Skywalker ... </p>
<p>
<b>Starring</b>: Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen ...
<br>
<b>Director</b>: George Lucas
...</p>
<p class="close" style="margin: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a style="cursor: pointer;">Close</a></p></div>
<p id="customActivator">This is a custom activator</p>
<p style="display: none;" id="customTip">This is the custom tooltip.
<p class="close" style="margin: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a style="cursor: pointer;">Close</a></p></p>
<script type="text/javascript">
Tooltip.add("customActivator", "customTip");
</script>
JavaScript Activation
You can draw the lines yourself with JavaScript
Tooltip.add('idOfActivator', 'idOfTooltip');
// Or
activator = document.getElementById('idOfActivator');
tooltip = document.getElementById('idOfTooltip');
Tooltip.add(activator, tooltip);
You can also simply choose the events that you want to show or hide the tooltip:
// Show on clicking and tabbing on to the activator
Tooltip.showEvent = new Array("click", "focus");
// Show on clicking on and tabbing off the activator
Tooltip.hideEvent = new Array("click", "blur");
4.3 rating from 4 votes
It seems like you could also use a custom class name to mimic something like the “for” attribute of label elements (I’ve done this for form validation). So you could say ‘class=”tooltip for_ep3icon”, and the javascript would look for a class of “for_something” for any element with a class of “tooltip” and bind it to that element. That way you’re not dependent on source ordering, and you can re-use identical tooltips that are the same for multiple elements on the page. Not that source-ordering in this instance is bad.
Hi Mark,
That totally makes sense. Decoupling elements like this would be very nice.
Cheers,
Dion
Mark,
I’ll add that soon, great idea :)
- Davey
Certainly interesting, but the first example can’t be tabbed to (only tabbed away from) and I had great difficulty making the second example dissappear (both w/ FF 1.5rc3).
Little bugs like that are what make me stear clear of similar js powered niceties :(
This is pretty neat. Simple to implement and unobtrusive. It’s too bad you have to bundle it with prototype and scriptaculous.
I had a fairly innovative approach for displaying tooltips for elements with title attributes a while back called Sweet Titles (http://www.dustindiaz.com/sweet-titles/). Fades in your tooltips and all that jazz.
Dustin,
I just released 0.5.0 which actually makes it possible to write-out the use of Scriptaculous,
just change “Tooltip.showMethod” and “Tooltip.hideMethod” to non-scriptaculous functions :)
- Davey
Doesn’t work at all in IE.
The Netflix copycat works in IE sort of.
Look here
http://testing.swophit.com/test/ieflix.html
It is not pretty due to the problem with png and IE, but it works.
Anyone have an idea how to make it better?
this is my hack,
http://blog.yam.com/yuanyuan/archives/833964.html
I change tooltips.js few code,
//Tooltip.showMethod(tooltip, {duration:Tooltip.fade});
change to =>
tooltip.style.display = “block”;
because when I use the fade effects, the border is black first, then Gradient Bevel display, so I change the code.
and U can C,I creat CSS hack,png transparent work fine with IE5.5+/FF1.0+
http://blog.yam.com/yuanyuan/archives/564273.html
[...] More info at http://tooltip.crtx.org/ and Ajaxian.com [...]
[...] Cool thing for showing tooltips… always a necessity! [...]
Great tips. Thanks.
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Is the link dead ? I can’t manage to download the script.
Will any one give full sample code for Tool Tip?
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Ok, I feel totally retarded, how do I get it to work??!
Can someone please post a step-by-step guide?
With EVERY detail of the process included??
If you do, please contact me by clicking my name on this post! (Luggruff!)
This tooltip script does not work properly. The first time I’ve tried it, it was working fine, but then afterwards when i tried it on a client website, the tooltip was a real mess.
First the tooltip was not properly aligned to my image and worse, on IE the tooltip does not appear at all.
Try the tooltip combined with mootools. This one is better and works perfectly on firefox and IE…
Great article, can I translate it and put on my site?
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if u can show the position with it of a object with it
then it would be nice.
if it is already happening there, then please tell me how it is.
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lol when I saw tooltip I was thinking the little yellow box but this is by far better.
Great article, thanks.
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Ajax does it again - this is incredibly useful. Thank you
Thanks for the tip! I never would have come up with such a clever idea myself! Thank god we have the internet:)
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Awesome. I have to say that, Ajax and these little tips for web programming have really made a huge difference to my work. I’m really only an amateur at this sort of thing. My day job is English professor, but I made the decision last year that I needed to offer a web presence for students who take my course, something that would allow them to keep up with day-to-day assignments and access music and film clips. The University provides a rather dull program that allows for some of this, but I was sick of its pre-programmed colors and fonts. I was pretty happy with what I eventually created in terms of image and look, but it didn’t offer a great deal of interactivity. Even just a small piece of code like this one really changes what I’ve been able to do, and while I have no idea if it actually promotes learning of any sort, I’ve certainly gotten lots of positive responses back from my students.
Thanks for very interesting article. btw. I really enjoyed reading all of your posts. It’s interesting to read ideas, and observations from someone else’s point of view… makes you think more. So please keep up the great work. Greetings.
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My #1 feature request to start with: provide an option to make clicking away from the tooltip hide it. I find having to click on the original element or on a separate close link to be somewhat confusing. Otherwise, keep up the good work!
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You mentioned about special CSS classes. Do you know any online tutorial that will teach me about this? I was also tasked to study this but I really can’t find any after a week of searching.
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