Tooltip

The tooltip or infotip or a hint is a common graphical user interface element. It is used in conjunction with a cursor, usually a pointer. The user hovers the pointer over an item, without clicking it, and a tooltip may appear—a small 'hover box' with information about the item being hovered over. Tooltips do not usually appear on mobile operating systems, because there is no cursor (though tooltips may be displayed when using a mouse). The tooltip or infotip or a hint is a common graphical user interface element. It is used in conjunction with a cursor, usually a pointer. The user hovers the pointer over an item, without clicking it, and a tooltip may appear—a small 'hover box' with information about the item being hovered over. Tooltips do not usually appear on mobile operating systems, because there is no cursor (though tooltips may be displayed when using a mouse). A common variant, especially in older software, is displaying a description of the tool in a status bar. Another system, in the classic Mac OS, that aims to solve the same problem, but in a slightly different way, is balloon help.Microsoft invented another term, 'ScreenTip', and uses it in its end-user documentation. Demonstrations of tooltip usage are prevalent on web pages. Many graphical web browsers display the title attribute of an HTML element as a tooltip when a user hovers the pointer over that element; in such a browser, when hovering over Wikipedia images and hyperlinks a tooltip will appear.