WZ Tooltip

In the Adobe user-to-user forums we often get questions on how to create more sophisticated tooltips. Thanks to Dennis Brody, in the GoLive Windows forum, I found the WZ Tooltip script.

Let me first give you a tiny demonstration so you know what I'm talking about. Hover the three links below to see the script in action.

• Tooltip with plain text

• Tooltip with text and html

• Tooltip with image and text

The WZ Tooltip script is very easy to set up and you can even use it with image maps. It's also perfect for displaying larger versions of thumbnail images.

The script has worked perfectly in all the browsers I've tested it in.

There are a large number of parameters that let you customize the look and the feel of the tooltips, pretty much all the normal CSS values can be changed, like font, font color, border color, background color, etc... The settings are hardwired so if you want different looks for the tooltips (depending on e.g the page or context) you need to use one copy of the script for each look.

Another set of options control the tooltip behavior and position.

For larger numbers of links in static pages it works well to copy one link, with the tooltip parameters set up, and then paste it when you need a new link. In the next step you go in and edit the parameters that are unique for every link.

I haven't used WZ Tooltip with dynamic pages (PHP, ASP...) but it should work even better when you have to handle large numbers of links.

The only thing you constantly have to keep in mind when using WZ Tooltips is to escape all special characters, but there are clear instructions on how and when to do that.

Please visit Walter Zorn's site to download the script - and don't forget to hit the "donate" button, just think how long it would have taken you to write the script yourself! :-)