Tooltips need a delay, and then they need to skip it

(blog.master.dev)

35 points | by ibobev 2 hours ago ago

6 comments

  • compiler-guy an hour ago

    I greatly appreciate this attention to detail, and there isn't enough of this in the world. For example, in Visual Studio popups on hover happen so fast you can barely select anything, or you end up clicking on the popup instead of selecting a word.

    • wang_li 4 minutes ago

      If there is a primary UI element on screen that the user can interact with and moving the mouse towards that causes a secondary, alternative, UI element to appear, the second element needs an active modifier key to bring it up. Tooltips and such are total trash and get in the way of usability. If you have something important then put it on the screen to begin with don't have it randomly jump in front of the user who is already mid action with something else.

    • gblargg 44 minutes ago

      Opus Magnum suffers from this. It feels like punishment for taking the most direct route to get the cursor where I want it.

  • phyzome an hour ago

    I ran into the same problem about 20 years ago when implementing hover-based dropdown menus on a website. It was only about 10 lines of JS and a couple global variables but I was the only person who understood it. :-P

    (These days I would have included more comments.)

    Naturally, there was a fallback to pure CSS menus, because we weren't barbarians.

  • nayroclade an hour ago

    Chris Coyier also posted a version using only HTML/CSS, no JS: https://blog.master.dev/delayed-then-instant-tooltips-with-h...

  • halostatue an hour ago

    The pure CSS version seems more interesting to me: https://blog.master.dev/delayed-then-instant-tooltips-with-h...