Create a Simple CSS + Javascript Tooltip with jQuery

It's always a joy to understand how things work. Well, at least I do. Alright, this time, I want to share with you all, how to create a simple jQuery tooltip. In this website, I'm using a script I grabed it online, and it uses onmouseover and onmouseout. It's really messy and annoying me. So, it's jQuery comes to rescue. The way it works is fairly simple, I use the Anchor tag REL and TITLE attributes to identify a tooltip and its content.

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Getting the mouse X and Y axis

First of all, I did a search with google, and I found this little script from this blog, very useful information. It shows me the idea how to retrieve the X and Y Axis coordinate.

$(document).ready(function()
 {
  $().mousemove(function(e)
   {
    $('p').html("X Axis : " + e.pageX + " | Y Axis " + e.pageY);
  });
});

Detect the Anchor element

I wrote a simple selector to select only Anchor tag with REL set to tooltip, I'm using the same approach in the Navigation List menu + jQuery Animate Effect tutorial. It's very straight forward and easy.

	$('a[rel=tooltip]').mouseover(function() {
		......
	});

As a result, anchor tags that support this simple jQuery tooltip should look like this

	sentences

Trick to hide the TITLE Attribute's Tooltip in browser

Okay, there is one major issue we need to sort it out - The native tooltip in Mozilla browsers. If you're using TITLE attribute in Anchor tag, on mouse over, a small yellow tooltip will appear, we want to avoid that. So, a simple solution, on mouse over, we will grab the value in the TITLE attribute, then, remove its value. While on mouse out, we'll put it back on. : ) simple and easy. You'll able to see this in the final code.

CSS

Finally, the CSS. I try to make the tooltip easy to reskin, you can customize the tooltip in this section. The structure of tooltip it made up with 3 sections - header, body and footer. It will be very easy for you to create your own skin.


#tooltip {
	position:absolute;
	z-index:9999;
	color:#fff;
	font-size:10px;
	width:180px;	
}

#tooltip .tipHeader {
	height:8px;
	background:url(images/tipHeader.gif) no-repeat;
}

/* IE hack */
*html #tooltip .tipHeader {margin-bottom:-6px;}

#tooltip .tipBody {
	background-color:#000;
	padding:5px 5px 5px 15px;
}

#tooltip .tipFooter {
	height:8px;
	background:url(images/tipFooter.gif) no-repeat;
}

Final Product

Basically, that's it. Just combine al the techniques together, and you have just learned how to create a simple jQuery tooltip! You can look at the demo or download it and start playing with it.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>Simple JQuery Tooltips turtorial</title>

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">

$(document).ready(function() {

	//Select all anchor tag with rel set to tooltip
	$('a[rel=tooltip]').mouseover(function(e) {
		
		//Grab the title attribute's value and assign it to a variable
		var tip = $(this).attr('title');	
		
		//Remove the title attribute's to avoid the native tooltip from the browser
		$(this).attr('title','');
		
		//Append the tooltip template and its value
		$(this).append('<div id="tooltip"><div class="tipHeader"></div><div class="tipBody">' + tip + '</div><div class="tipFooter"></div></div>');		
		
		//Set the X and Y axis of the tooltip
		$('#tooltip').css('top', e.pageY + 10 );
		$('#tooltip').css('left', e.pageX + 20 );
		
		//Show the tooltip with faceIn effect
		$('#tooltip').fadeIn('500');
		$('#tooltip').fadeTo('10',0.8);
		
	}).mousemove(function(e) {
	
		//Keep changing the X and Y axis for the tooltip, thus, the tooltip move along with the mouse
		$('#tooltip').css('top', e.pageY + 10 );
		$('#tooltip').css('left', e.pageX + 20 );
		
	}).mouseout(function() {
	
		//Put back the title attribute's value
		$(this).attr('title',$('.tipBody').html());
	
		//Remove the appended tooltip template
		$(this).children('div#tooltip').remove();
		
	});

});

</script>

<style>
body {font-family:arial;font-size:12px;text-align:center;}
div#paragraph {width:300px;margin:0 auto;text-align:left}
a {color:#aaa;text-decoration:none;cursor:pointer;cursor:hand}
a:hover {color:#000;text-decoration:none;}

/* Tooltip */

#tooltip {
	position:absolute;
	z-index:9999;
	color:#fff;
	font-size:10px;
	width:180px;
	
}

#tooltip .tipHeader {
	height:8px;
	background:url(images/tipHeader.gif) no-repeat;
}

/* IE hack */
*html #tooltip .tipHeader {margin-bottom:-6px;}

#tooltip .tipBody {
	background-color:#000;
	padding:5px;
}

#tooltip .tipFooter {
	height:8px;
	background:url(images/tipFooter.gif) no-repeat;
}

</style>

</head>

<body>

<div id="paragraph">
A paragraph typically consists of a unifying main point, thought, or idea accompanied by supporting details. The non-fiction paragraph usually begins with the general and moves towards the more specific so as to advance an argument or point of view. Each <a rel="tooltip" title="A paragraph typically consists of a unifying main point, thought, or idea accompanied by <b>supporting details</b>">paragraph</a> builds on what came before and lays the ground for what comes next. Paragraphs generally range three to seven sentences all combined in a single paragraphed statement. In prose fiction successive details, for example; but it is just as common for the point of a prose paragraph to occur in the middle or the end. A paragraph can be as short as one word or run the length of multiple pages, and may consist of one or many <a rel="tooltip" title="Testing of Sentences">sentences</a>. When dialogue is being quoted in fiction, a new paragraph is used each time the person being quoted changed.
</div>

</body>
</html>

Copyright & Usage

The effects and techniques demonstrated in tutorials on Queness can be used in whatever manner you wish without attribution. You cannot copy whole tutorials (unless permission is given), either in English or translated to another language.

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