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> That's what tooltips are for. Harder on mobile, but there's no excuse for web developers who don't include them. I consider tooltips to be the Norman Doors o
by ken 7y ago
> That's what tooltips are for. Harder on mobile, but there's no excuse for web developers who don't include them.
I consider tooltips to be the Norman Doors of software. Users can't figure it out? Slap more words on it!
Are they for teaching, or reminding, or clarifying? There are far better ways to do all of these. The people that need them don't know where they are or how to make them appear. The people that don't need them trigger them by accident and get frustrated they don't go away. When someone does figure out the pattern, they waste a couple minutes moving their mouse very slowly across every square inch of the screen in search of more. Even if there are more tooltips to be found, it's like reading a few sentences from the manual in random order.
I don't think I've ever seen a case where tooltips were the best solution.
- n3k5 7y ago> When someone does figure out the pattern, they waste a couple minutes moving their mouse very slowly across every square inch of the screen in search of more. Ableton Live (a DAW) has an interesting solution for this: There are no tool-tips at all. Instead, you can open an 'info' box in the corner of the window/screen that instantly shows a quick explainer and relevant keyboard shortcuts for the control you're currently pointing at (and its name), without obscuring anything. It's not perfect (e.g. there's no way to hyperlink to more information in the on-line help), but on top of being easily discoverable and put-away-able, it can do another nifty thing: For controls that are user-configurable, the 'info' text is user-editable as well. It's like source code comments, but for the GUI. E.g. instead of "Macro 3", you can have: "Glitches the wubs. Don't forget to wax the sidechain!"