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Subject:Re: Tooltip Guidelines? From:"Susan W. Gallagher" <sgallagher -at- EXPERSOFT -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 22 May 1997 10:51:32 -0700
At 09:47 AM 5/22/97 -0500, Danna Cardwell wrote:
> We are adding tooltips to our products. We are struggling with wording. How
> much is too much? How exact does the tooltip have to be?
Jared Spool's group, User Interface Engineering, did a study on
tool tips in the Jan/Feb 96 issue of _Eye for Design_. The short
version is that they tested the terse, MS Tool Tips approach and
the more verbose Lotus-style hover bubbles and verbosity won.
I'm not sure I'd go for the whole Gettysberg Address in a Tool
Tip (as I've seen some programmers try <g>), especially if the
text has to appear on a single line, but more than a single
word seems to be the most usable approach.
(You can reach Jared at jspool -at- uie -dot- com)
Sue Gallagher
sgallagher -at- expersoft -dot- com
-- The _Guide_ is definitive.
Reality is frequently inaccurate.
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