Hot on the heels of ThickBox comes jTip, a jQuery tool tip solution. Of course, a tool tip type solution is anything but monumental; you don’t have to tell me that. Regardless, given my keen liking for the great jQuery library, along with a legitimate need to provide one last solution before I left Albertson’s, I have conjured up a tool tip solution using jQuery. So yup, it’s just another tool tip, but maybe with a little more flexibility/customization than what you might currently be use to with similar solutions.

web graphics is a compilation of hypertext design resources, links, and commentary.

Prototip allows you to easily create both simple and complex tooltips using the Prototype javascript framework.

I got an email a few weeks back from Mark Wubben saying he’d re-written NiceTitles, the JS script that provides the wee pop-ups on this (and many other) sites. It looks like he’s done a very nice job (not that I know an awful lot about Javascript) and seems to have fixed many of the problems that people complained about before.

A classic. The script uses a background image.

I’ve completed my updating of my aging AJAX help balloons / tool tips / dialog balloons / whatever you want to call them. New features included: Less library dependence. It’s still prototype.js-based and dependent, but no longer requires Scriptaculous nor the prototype “improvement” script that they previously used. You can optionally still use Scriptaculous if you want the sexy fading effects. Just include the scriptaculous.js file in your document and the balloons will detect it and use it, no configuration needed. (However, if you want to use different Scriptaculous effects than the standard Fade and Appear, you can set the hideEffect and/or fadeEffect options to whatever you want… Doesn’t even have to be Scriptaculous, just Scriptaculous-compatible) Use any object as an anchor point. This was available in later revisions of v1, but I’ve solidified it’s support. Simply assign the anchoring element as the balloon’s icon property at instantiation. (See the example page for details) Anchor postioning control. This feature allows you to move the anchor around within your icon for fine-tuning the balloon’s display. (See the example page for details) Non-caching remote data requests. If you’ve ever tried to use v1 of the balloons with dynamic data, you’d know that once the balloon makes it’s first request, it caches the request result and would not make subsequent calls for fresh data. You can now force the balloon to make a fresh request before each showing using instantiation options. (See the example page for details) Fixed direction assignment. By default, the balloons will position themselves based on available realestate, but you can now assign a fixed direction using instantiation options. (See the example page for details) Still 100% free, now released under the MIT open source license. Better organized and fully commented/documented code. This was a complete refactor/rewrite of the code base, and I made sure to comment the code very thoroughly and try to explain my reasoning (or insanity) as best I could. In addition, I’ve written a proper API page, and have revisited the examples page.

My co-workers pointed out a nice effect on the Vox registration form. As you tab through each input field, some helper text appears in box out to the right. Try it out. Update (4/20/2007): It has been pointed out that Vox has changed their form, and it no longer uses this effect. It's a basic example of how helpful a little JavaScript and CSS can be in a form. Instead of the input hints always showing and potentionally cluttering a very simple form, only the hint for the currently focused input will show. This article will show a way to do this.