[openbeos] Re: Tool tips
- From: "Cyan" <cyanh256@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2008 02:43:15 +0100 BST
> I find tooltips can be very useful and I don't find them intrusive
> at all if they are done well.
> On the other hand I have a drawing app that shows co-ordinates as
> a tooltip as soon as I move anything and it often gets in the way.
Would you find Humdinger's idea of having a specific key or mouse
button to show the tool-tips (with no delay between pressing it and
the tool-tip appearing) a major inconvenience?
(This is assuming the icons are as clear as possible in their design,
preferably with text captions. Otherwise the GUI could be considered
broken regardless of tool-tip implementation)
Here's some of the possible ways it could be implemented:
- Middle mouse button acts as the "help"/"info" button when not
being used for scrolling.
- Alternatively (or in addition to?) a key could be used, such
as one of the Windows extended keys that Humdinger suggested,
or something else (e.g. right control, pause, alt gr, etc.).
- It could be configured so that you have to hold the key to
see the tool-tips (and rolling the mouse over different on-screen
elements instantly flips between them) and releasing hides them.
The tool-tips could follow the mouse pointer pixel-by-pixel in
this variation, so they never hide what you're pointing to.
- Or it could be configured so that the key is pressed once to show
the tool-tips, and moving the mouse away (or clicking) clears the
tool-tip.
- Or it could even be an on/off toggle instead. Re-using scroll
lock might be appropriate, since it has a (redundant) toggle
operation associated with it?
- Probably many other variations on the idea. Any other suggestions?
Also on a related note, I'm just looking at the BeMail toolbar
(which I think is a good example of a toolbar done properly), and
also the Firefox toolbar. Putting the two windows side-by-side
reveals that the toolbars are exactly the same height.
While the Firefox toolbar is icons-only (and therefore relies on
tool-tips), the BeMail toolbar manages to fit text captions into
the same space, and still retains icon clarity.
I mention this only because lots of people consider captions below
toolbar icons to be space hogs (hence tool-tips everywhere),
but that needn't be the case.
If the icons are 16x16 there might be a problem, but I think having
toolbar icons so small defeats the point of them anyway -- large
quick-access mouse targets for the most commonly-used functions.
One of the more extreme examples of that (and why tool-tips become
so important when such design errors have occured):
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9dwer2IaqWQ/SBAYc_4ws5I/AAAAAAAAALI/
bUfwrjYUhZE/s1600/msword.JPG
Other related posts:
