[Sigia-l] OFF-TOPIC plea for HTML help

[Joe Sokohl]

Hi all,
Thanks for the comments & interest. Quickly, I asked for help in how to 
add tool-tip like help to the options in an HTML dropdown list. I know 
you can use the <TITLE> tag on objects such as radio buttons and text 
boxes--but can you have help pop up for individual options in a Select 
list?

Reason for this: the width of the list is constrained shorter than the 
options themselves (which are titles of documents in a library).

Here's what I got:

==================================
You can work around this by removing the pull down altogether and 
instead using an overlib tooltip with linked options in the overlib 
pop-up.

You'll find details and examples [see last] here  
http://www.bosrup.com/web/overlib/features.html

Overlib works with all browser but requires JavaScript enabled. However 
it does increase the page size by a good 20-30 kb.

Another option is to use a Show-Hide feature. See 
http://www.dingonline.com/qrc_2/facilities/wireframe1120/q1.htm and 
click on "Show Definitions..." Note that this too uses JavaScript.
================================
Joe,
you'd have to use Javascript for this I think, I'd say with something 
like

<select onChange="javscript:doToolTip(this.value);">
<options....... />
</select>

where the javascript function doToolTip() could take the vale of the
selected item, match it in a list, and then display a message of some 
sort
(either via an alert or via a dynamic DIV being displayed somewhere near 
the
select box - which would probably be better)

The problem with this approach is that you wouldn't see the message until
after you selected something - which some would say is already too late.

Hope that helps, I'll be interested to see your summary :)
===============================
according to the specs (i.e. recommendations),
the title attribute can be added to almost any element.

if you look at the xhtml DTD, for example, it states:

<!-- core attributes common to most elements
   id       document-wide unique id
   class    space separated list of classes
   style    associated style info
   title    advisory title/amplification
-->

the DTD goes on to define these as %corrattrs (core attributes?),
which are a constituent element of %attrs (attributes),
which then appear in nearly every element, including the option element.

http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd


whether or not the browser renders it is another issue, as usual.
have you actually tried it?
it doesnt work in my quick test, on ie 5.2/macosX, nor chimera/macosX.
i suspect it hasnt taken the effort to reconcile the issues around the
nature of a select menu, where the user has to hold the mouse button down
and be in a type of active mode, unlike the typical behavior of other 
tooltips,
where the user is assumed to be in a non-active mode w/r/t the specific 
form element.

hope this helps, from the standards side anyway.
perhaps you could do it in some nifty but crufty javascript that mimics 
the tooltips.