Adding Tooltips to Objects

A tooltip is a small comment or label that appears in a little yellow box when the mouse cursor focuses on (is placed over) an object. These are commonly used in a variety of programs to provide assistance to users by conveniently giving them tips about the names and functions of buttons, fields, etc. Flying Popcorn also allows you to create tooltips through the Object Properties dialog box or the right-click context menu.

In Flying Popcorn, a tooltip is composed of a title, which is text that appears at the top in bold, and the content, which is the main text of the message. Additionally, small icons can be added to the tooltip to distinguish what kind of content it contains.

To add a tooltip to an object

• Do one of the following:
  • Double-click the object and open the Object Properties dialog box. Click on the Attributes tab
    Right-click the object and select Tooltip message from the context menu.
  • Adjust the tooltip settings as you want and click OK.
• After the tooltip has been set, you can see it while editing the project every time you focus the mouse cursor on that object. The tooltip settings are listed below.

Tooltip settings

1. Use Balloon style: The tooltip can appear in either a box or a cartoon-style word balloon. The default setting is the box. Check this option to have it appear in a balloon.
2. Show 30 Seconds: The tooltip will be shown for 30 seconds while the mouse is over the object.
3. Title: Enter the title of the tooltip. This is will appear in bold at the top.
4. [Icon Buttons]: The four radio buttons labled No ICON, Information, Warning, and Error refer to a small icon that may appear in the tooltip message. This helps distinguish what kind of message it is.
5. Contents: This is the main content of the message. It may be up to 255 characters long, and the text is wrapped automatically. For information on special characters, see below.
6. Remove: Click this button to remove the tooltip message. Be careful, because it will delete the message and undo all of the settings.

Special Characters

If you want to insert special characters into the Contents field for a tooltip, such as a tab spacing or a new line, you must enter the special character code rather than entering them normally. The special characters are as follows:

Backslash: \\
Newline: \n
Tab: \n

So for example, if you wanted to enter a file path into a tooltip, you would have to use the special character codes because file paths contain backslashes. A filepath would look like this: C:\\My Documents\\My Pictures\\Vacation Photos.