Re: HIG question

[Reinout van Schouwen <reinout cs vu nl>]

Hello Loban,

On Wed, 15 Jan 2003, Loban A Rahman wrote:

> I want to add tooltips to my brand new HIG-compliant dialogs. Do I add
> them to the labels of the controls or the controls themselves?

I would say there are two factors to weigh (provided that a tooltip does
indeed offer useful additional information, otherwise you wouldn't need
one):

1. What information should stay visible at all cost?
2. Where is the tooltip most likely to actually provide help?

It's important that a tooltip doesn't obscure a part of the GUI a user
wants to be able to see (for instance the entry field). OTOH, a tooltip
will only appear when a user is hovering with the mouse cursor, and the
location where (s)he hovers is likely not too far away from your entry
field.

If not too obtrusive, you may consider using the same tooltip for both the
label and the entry field.

regards,
-- 
Reinout van Schouwen			Artificial Intelligence student
email: reinout cs vu nl			mobile phone: +31-6-44360778
GPG public key http://www.cs.vu.nl/~reinout/reinout.asc

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