Floating Hints

Technically, I have no idea what they’re called exactly. However, I do recognize them as floating hints and probably tooltips. If you haven’t seen what they look like, then you probably haven’t visited Edrei’s Footsteps in the Mirror blog.

What I like about these things is they are a great help for those who are too worried of clicking on some links. There have been surveys done where a user asks, if I clicked or submitted my information then how am I suppose to know where would it go? In comes the solution..DOM tooltips.

One of the great things about the Bubble Tooltips by Web-Graphics is that they are fully CSS supported. You can ‘skin’ the tooltips to how you desire very easily.

An example of what you’re expected to achieve under their guide is something like this.

The other thing great about the method they used is you can limit the tooltips to a section. If you look at the screenshot, the right column links actually will not trigger the tooltips. So other than the power of offering a better convenience to users of your website, you could also prevent certain areas from needing to highlight anything important. :)

The setbacks though is that this isn’t a WordPress plugin like what Edrei’s using – I think. The other setback is no matter how fancy you want the bubble to look if it takes too long to load, users will not be able to view the description.

So if you’re using this technique, minimize the filesize where possible and push away the limitations of having your users doubt your links by implementing something like WG’s Bubble Tooptips.

Oh yeah, and happy Chinese New Year to everyone. May the dog lick you on the hand and his saliva blesses you with this year’s prosperity, joy, health and wealth. :D