ToolTip : Java Glossary

by Roedy Green ©1996-2008 Canadian Mind Products
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ToolTip

Aka hoverhelp, value tip, flyover help, or flyover label. Explanatory text that pops up when you let your mouse linger over an icon or component without clicking it. The text goes away automatically when you move your mouse. You don’t have to dismiss it with a click the way you would with a dialog box. Java makes it very easy to add tooltips to your GUI application because every Swing component supports JComponent. setToolTipText.

// adding ToolTips to your JComponents

final JTextField schemeNameText = new JTextField();
schemeNameText.setToolTipText( "Name of the color scheme" );

final JComboBox  fontStyleChoice = new JComboBox();
fontStyleChoice.setToolTipText( "select font style" );

You can right align the tooltip by including <html><p align="right"> as the first characters of the tooltip String. This will be useful for languages that flow right to left.

That’s all there is to it. You don’t normally need to get involved with any of the other classes and methods.

Learning More

Sun’s Javadoc on JComponent.setToolTipText : available:

on the web at java.Sun.com
in the JDK 1.6.0_06 or in JDK 1.5.0_15 on your local J: drive.

Sun’s Javadoc on the JToolTip class : available:

on the web at java.Sun.com
in the JDK 1.6.0_06 or in JDK 1.5.0_15 on your local J: drive.

Sun’s Javadoc on the ToolTipManager class : available:

on the web at java.Sun.com
in the JDK 1.6.0_06 or in JDK 1.5.0_15 on your local J: drive.

Sun’s Javadoc on the BasicToolTipUI class : available:

on the web at java.Sun.com
in the JDK 1.6.0_06 or in JDK 1.5.0_15 on your local J: drive.

Sun’s Javadoc on the MultiToolTipUI class : available:

on the web at java.Sun.com
in the JDK 1.6.0_06 or in JDK 1.5.0_15 on your local J: drive.

Icon
JComponent
JDialog

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