Display properties for Dojo tooltip widgets versus system tooltips

Here are some questions Becky Gibson answered about the display properties
for Dojo tooltip widgets versus system tooltips.

ckl: For the Dojo tooltip widgets, are they using the display properties
from the operating system settings for tooltips or are they using the theme
(colors, fonts) for Dojo widgets?

bg: No, the dojo widgets are not using the operating system preferences for
tooltip colors and fonts.  The colors and fonts for tooltips are specified
in the current theme.  We have no way of selectively applying different
themes other than for high contrast mode. Thus, someone who doesn't use
high contrast mode and has red on yellow specified for tooltips would never
see this color combination because the tooltip colors are specified in the
dojo theme.  We have not attempted to honor the high contrast system colors
- we assume that all color information is gone.  We don't attempt honoring
system colors because of the poor support for the CSS2 system colors in the
browsers. And system colors has been deprecated in CSS3 in favor of
appearance.  So, eventually when we get better support for CSS3 in the
browsers, we might create a system settings type theme.  Then, an
application could provide a style switcher and offer the system color
theme.

ckl: If there is an image inside of the Dojo tooltip widget and the image
has alt text, does the tooltip for the image use the system display
property settings for tooltips (i.e. is the image tooltip a system tooltip
or a JavaScript Dojo tooltip)?

bg: dojo doesn't really care what is inside of a tooltip.  But you mean
what happens when someone mouses over an image that has a title attribute
(Firefox does not display alt text on mouseover) that is included inside of
a dojo tooltip?  In that case, if the user mouses over the image in the
tooltip, the browser will provide the tooltip for the image will honor the
system tooltip settings.  Dojo just displays whatever HTML is provided for
the tooltip contents and that HTML will be rendered by the browser.  But,
the only way to be able to mouseover something in a dojo tooltip is to
invoke the tooltip by setting focus to the trigger item and then moving the
mouse over the tooltip.  If you invoke the dojo tooltip by mouseover of the
trigger item, moving the mouse off of the trigger to put it into the
tooltip will cause the tooltip to be closed.

Cathy Laws

IBM Research  Human Ability & Accessibility Center
11501 Burnet Road,  Bldg 904 Office 5D016, Austin, Texas 78758
Phone: (512) 838-4595  FAX: (512) 246-8502
E-mail: claws@us.ibm.com, Web: http://www.ibm.com/able