Tooltips – I’ve got them!

What’s with the words surrounded by the green boxes?

I’ve added a [tooltip content=”a set of software components that adds specific abilities to a larger software application – from Wikipedia” url=”” ]plugin[/tooltip] that will display extra information about a term. When you hover your cursor over that text in the green box, a little popup will appear that explains what the term is all about.

That little popup is called a tooltip. You’ve seen them already in computer software you use. I decided to add tooltips so that I don’t have to use as many parenthesis (which I seem to love almost as much as I love commas).

What are tooltips?

A tooltip is a graphical element that appears when you hover your cursor over an item. You don’t need to click on it and it will fade away a couple of seconds after you move your cursor off of the item.

I’ve setup my items so that they are surrounded by a green box. This should make it obvious that the item contains some extra information.

I use a lot of unfamiliar and geeky terms on this blog and I don’t want to force you to have to do a web search on their meaning or wander away in frustration. For more advanced users, you won’t be stuck reading through information you already know in order to get to the meat of the post.

No ads

I hate the tooltips that pop up an ad for a product and obscure everything I’m trying to read.

No audio or video

My biggest pet peeve now is when audio starts playing just because my cursor wandered over an ad. Those people must die! (are you listening msnbc.com? Yea, I’m talking to you!)

Do you like the tooltips or do you find them annoying? What kinds of terms would you like me to use this with? Let me know in the comments below.