[Sigia-l] Rollover Question (Web 2.0)

[tOM Trottier]

On Friday, September 29, 2006 at 15:21,
Ziya Oz <listera at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Todd Warfel:
> 
> > Great design doesn't rely on tooltips.
> 
> Neither does it rely on wanton exposition.
> 
> The key word here is "rely." What exactly does it mean? What may be
> extra/complementary for some users may turn out to be
> important/crucial for others, in a given context. (And I'm referring
> to rollover behavior in general, not just tooltips or menus.) It's
> very easy to dismiss this by saying, don't have a black box as an
> icon and reveal its purpose only on rollover tooltip. Duh. But there
> are far more challenging cases where the layered rollover info is
> darn near impossible to reveal in any other convenient way and
> provides excellent complementary value for many, and even crucial
> value for some. Info layering and progressive disclosure are
> fundamental design principles. They can be used for great effect or
> misapplied like anything else in life.

Examples? 

The only thing I can think of where rollovers might be useful is displaying some info that relates to 
a particular location on an image or map.

Otherwise, I thing rollovers conceal rather than reveal. 
Important info should be obvious, or reachable via a link.

tOM

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