Re: [WAI_IG] Tooltips (was Nielsen's Latest ...)

> AFAIK, the only control is indirect, by choosing OS parameters. The Windows
> desktop setting "Tooltip" controls appearance for example. However, the font
> size also seems to be affected by the app: I just looked at the same page in
> IE and Mozilla, and an abbr tooltip looked much larger in one than the
> other. (Unless Moz hasn't picked up the new size for some reason - it did
> pick up the colour.)

Tried the same thing, Mozilla doesn't seem to be behaving correctly. I didn't 
do a thorough test to see if it will ever pick up the differences (if only 
after a reboot), I shall later.
> 
> I did suggest that more control by the page author would be good (here?) a
> long time ago, and was told not to be a silly girl ;-)
> 
> However, given how few people know how to change even simple things like
> browser font size, how many fewer dig about in the desktop settings, I
> wonder?

On the one hand don't be a silly girl :p~

On the other hand there is a problem here in that while user control, 
preferably through OS settings, but failing that through browser settings, is 
the way to go for a lot of these things, for reasons that have been detailed 
numerous times here and elsewhere, there is a failure in helping users to 
understand how to do this and in making this process accessible and usable in 
itself (for example a user might reasonably expect that anything that is going 
to help the accessibility of their Windows system will be available from the 
control panel applet - if they get that far - called "accessibility options", 
though the display section of that only offers high contrast settings, and 
doesn't allow the user to launch the general display applet that would enable 
them to further improve how their system worked for them).

While we should assume that users have set up their systems in a reasonable 
way, more work is needed by OS and Browser producers to ensure that this is 
actually the case.

--
Jon Hanna
<http://www.hackcraft.net/>
*Thought provoking quote goes here*

Received on Wednesday, 12 November 2003 06:01:51 UTC