Tool-tip pop-ups? Use title in your tags

By Dianne Reuby
Posted Wednesday, September 29, 2004

If you've created web pages, you've probably used the ALT as part of your IMG tag. When your visitor puts their cursor over the image, a pop-up "tool-tip" gives them essential information.

You can get exactly the same effect on other web objects, using "title".

Here are some examples.

a href="news.html" title="Click on this link to get the latest local and national news, weather, and traffic information"News

table border="0" title="Choose a category for information on stock levels, availability, and suppliers"

ul title="Click on a topic to get full details of the services and resources that we provide to all our members, affiliates and associates"

These "tool-tips" can give valuable help to your visitors, and make your page look neater - you don't need to have long explanations on display. By including them in a title tag, your visitors will see them when they need them.

They'll work in Internet Explorer version 4 onwards. Netscape version 4 and later should show them correctly, but I haven't been able to test all versions.

Happy site building!

About the Author
Dianne Reuby is co-author of the e-book "First Website Builder". Dianne created and runs the First Web Builder site, dedicated to providing ebooks and tips for new webmasters. Visit FWB at (http://firstwebbuilder.co.uk/)
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