tooltips, formerly Re: [development] jquery 1.0 release imminent

[Dave Cohen]

Apologies if this has become off-topic for most...

On Tuesday 22 August 2006 11:50, Morbus Iff wrote:
> In my particular case, the information on hover was of little import -
> it was a foreshadowing of what they'd be clicking on, such that there
> was no loss of inaccessibility - someone could just click the link and
> get (even more) of what the hover was actually talking about.

Personally, that's what I'd use a hovering tooltip for.  But I've had clients 
ask for much more.  Some people like a big floating box with lots of HTML.

For my own sites I plan to use what I call a 'clicktip'.  To toogle it's 
visiblilty, the user clicks.  And it appears exactly where it is placed 
within the document.  It's like a collapsible fieldset, but you can put them 
anywhere (not just forms) and style them appropriately.

>
> With that said, of the four options I described, you probably most like
> the the <div> one with IDs. But where would you put those? Putting them
> right next to the text ruins readability of the main text, and putting
> them at the end of the page removes any sort of context.

I'm writing my script to support either.  Let's say I have a term that needs a 
definition.  I want to link the hovertip this way...

<p>blah blah <span hovertip="termdefinition">term</span> blah blah blah
blah blah <span hovertip="termdefinition">term (again)</span> blah blah</p>

<div class="hovertip" id="termdefinition">the definition goes here.</div>

.. so I get the definition everywhere the term appears.  The definition div 
can be anywhere on the page.

-Dave