Re: Terminology help needed!

[Alan M Hegarty <alan -dot- hegarty -at- prs -dot- de>]

Beth Kane wrote:

> Our applications have lots of "hover help," wherein holding your cursor over
> something causes a line of text to appear in a rectangular box, explaining
> that item. This 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've also
> heard this term: "Help hints." What is the proper term?
> 
> It can't be ToolTips, because it doesn't just describe toolbar buttons.
> "ScreenTips"


Beth

Tooltips vs hover help: 

go with tooltips, so long as you're passing on narrative/descriptive
information; 
for the naming the parts-stuff, tooltip is "clearer" instead of "help
hint" or "fly-over".

With "hover help", i'm tempted to ask if you can cross the English
Channel.....

for most othercases (99%), where those pop-up menus provide more than
just what-it-is info,
maybe you can choose commands or something, use "context menu" or
possibly "context help".
(though i favor "context menu"); 

does that help?

alan






> 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). MS says you shouldn't say
> "hover."
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> Beth Kane, Tucson
> bethkane -at- tcisolutions -dot- com
> 
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