exposing element titles & URIs with opera (was Re: dhtmlai focus group?)

aloha, jonathan!

in opera 5.11 in the Preferences (alt+p in windows) dialog, there is a
Toolbars property sheet, under which you will find a grouping of 3
checkboxes with the legend "Tool tips"

schematically the route is: Preferences (ALT+P) > Toolbars > Tool tips

the "Tool tips" fieldset contains the following checkboxes:
[ ] show tool tips for links (note: hotkey is 'l')
[ ] show tool tips for buttons (note: hotkey is 'b')
[ ] show tool tips for element titles (note: hotkey is 'e')

a few comments:

1. if "show tool tips for links" and "show tool tips for element titles" are
checked, when you mouseover a link, opera will display the title in
preference to the URI; opera also uses the status bar to display element
titles, so if an link does not have a title, the status line should display
the URI;

2. if "show tool tips for links" is checked and "show tool tips for element
titles" is unchecked, then the tooltip should display the URI of the link;
the URI should also be echoed on the status line;

3. if only "show tool tips for element titles" is checked, then opera should
display all element titles -- such as a title defined for a horizontal rule
or the expansions provided for an acronym or abbreviation using the ACRONYM
or ABBR elements -- both as tooltips and as status line messages, again
OnMouseOver; i would expect the status line to display the URI of any link
that doesn't contain a title;

so, i'm not sure whether you can have your cake and eat it to -- that is,
having the title displayed as a tooltip and the status line display the
URI -- using opera as it currently functions...

of course, jonathan, you know to take all of the "shoulds" and "wills" with
at least a pound of salt, especially as i can't personally verify if
everything actually goes according to plan when a MouseOver event fires...
nor can i tell you if tooltips are generated when one tab-navigates, but i
can tell you that i, at least, have not been able to get opera5 to display
anything other than the URI of a link in the status line when i tab-navigate
from link to link...  based upon my personal experience, i would have to
conclude that opera5 treats the exposition of element titles as a
pointer-dependent event -- i can understand if a UA chose not to expose
titles through the tooltip mechanism when the user is tab-navigating, but i
don't understand why one can't designate either the status bar or --
preferably, from my perspective, in order that i could still obtain the URI
from the status line -- in a specially reserved area of the user interface,
which, in effect, would be a "title" bar, which could also be used to expose
ALT text...  that, would, in turn, i realize, lead to conflict when one
encounters a graphic, for which ALT text has been defined, which is also
being used as a hyperlink, if a "title" had been defined for the link...
but, since JFW hasn't fixed that particular problem (despite hearing about
it) for a few releases, i don't think i'd mind if opera at least allowed me
to choose which bit of conditional content to expose in the case of such a
collision -- the contents of the ALT defined for the graphic, or the TITLE
defined for the link...

gregory.

PS: system info:
   OS: windows 2000 professional (SP2)
   UA: opera version: 5.11 (build: 904)
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Received on Thursday, 26 July 2001 18:51:56 UTC