Tooltip

The tooltip, infotip, or hint is a common graphical user interface element displayed as an informational text box when hovering over an item. It is used in conjunction with a cursor, usually a pointer. The user hovers the pointer over an item, without clicking it, and a tooltip may appear—a small "hover box" with information about the item being hovered over.[1][2] Tooltips do not usually appear on mobile operating systems, because there is no cursor (though tooltips may be displayed when using a mouse).

A web browser tooltip displayed for the following hyperlink: HTML

Variants

A common variant, especially in older software, is displaying a description of the tool in a status bar. Another system, in the classic Mac OS, that aims to solve the same problem, but in a slightly different way, is balloon help. Microsoft invented another term, "ScreenTip", and uses it in its end-user documentation.

Examples

Demonstrations of tooltip usage are prevalent on web pages. Many graphical web browsers display the title attribute of an HTML element as a tooltip when a user hovers the pointer over that element; in such a browser, when hovering over Wikipedia images and hyperlinks a tooltip will appear.

CSS, HTML, and JavaScript allow web designers to create customized tooltips.

Name

The term tooltip originally came from older Microsoft applications (like Microsoft Word 95), which had a toolbar where moving the mouse over the buttons (the Toolbar icons) displayed these tooltips, a short description of the function of the tool in the toolbar. More recently, these tooltips are used in various parts of an interface, not only on toolbars.

Hiding tooltips

Some software and applications, such as GIMP, provide an option for users to turn off some or all tooltips. However, such options are left to the discretion of the developer, and are often not implemented.

See also

References
  1. "Tooltip Definition". TechTerms.com. Retrieved 13 May 2014.
  2. "About Tooltip Controls - Windows applications". Microsoft Docs.
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