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Subject:Fly-over hints, ToolTips, ScreenTips, what is it? From:"Beth Kane" <bethkane -at- tcisolutions -dot- com> To:<TECHWR-L -at- LISTS -dot- RAYCOMM -dot- COM> Date:Fri, 3 Dec 1999 12:09:47 -0700
Our applications have lots of "hover help," wherein holding your cursor over
something in the interface causes a line of text to appear in a box,
explaining that item. The help text disappears within about 3 seconds. The
previous writer of the docs I'm working on referred to it as "fly-over
hints." I've heard others casually refer to it as hover help. I don't think
either of those terms is correct.
I haven't been able to discover the proper way to refer to this feature. It
can't be ToolTips, because it doesn't just describe toolbar buttons. What do
you call it -- ScreenTips? This was suggested by the MS manual of style.
Using the word "screen" kind of bothers me, though, because that word went
out with DOS (unless, of course, you're referring to the monitor's entire
screen).
Help!
Thanks in advance,
Beth Kane, Tucson
bethkane -at- tcisolutions -dot- com
