[Bug 10873] New: Provide a method of explicitly setting a tooltip for an element

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=10873

           Summary: Provide a method of explicitly setting a tooltip for
                    an element
           Product: HTML WG
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: All
        OS/Version: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: HTML5 spec (editor: Ian Hickson)
        AssignedTo: ian@hixie.ch
        ReportedBy: everett@zufelt.ca
         QAContact: public-html-bugzilla@w3.org
                CC: mike@w3.org, public-html-wg-issue-tracking@w3.org,
                    public-html@w3.org


A mechanism should be provided to allow authors to explicitly set a tooltip for
an element or group of elements.  This is not the same as setting a title for
the element, which is text that is 'appropriate for a tooltip', as the spec
does not specify anywhere that the text is to be used as a tooltip.

The current draft specifies:

The title attribute represents advisory information for the element, such as
would be appropriate for a tooltip. On a link, this could be the title or a
description of the target resource; on an image, it could be the image credit
or a description of the image; on a paragraph, it could be a footnote or
commentary on the text; on a citation, it could be further information about
the source; and so forth. The value is text.
(http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/elements.html#the-title-attribute)


There is currently no mechanism to explicitly set a tooltip for any element or
group of elements.  The current solution relies on the title attribute, which
user agents may present however they like, or not at all.  Commonly UA
implementations of exposing the title attribute lack the following criteria
that are required for accessibility:

1. Must be accessible in a device agnostic manner.
2. Text must be resizeable and restyleable.
3. Duration of display must be configurable by users.

It would be possible to use either a tooltip attribute, or a tooltip element
with a for attribute set to the id of the element(s) to which the tooltip
applies.  The benefit of using an element over an attribute is that the content
would be more easily styleable.

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Received on Thursday, 30 September 2010 16:25:00 UTC