Best solution for 'pop-up' help

[Glasgow]

I want to be able to display very brief (i.e. a few words or a short sentence) of 'pop-up' help in some shape or form when a user hovers over (or clicks on) a 'button' or text. At the moment, I am achieving this via an <a> tag whose 'title' property is set to the value of the text AND, when clicked, the code below is triggered to fire a new window containing the same message but I have a few problems:

a) How can I achieve an empty title bar in the window that pops up.
b) Can I make it appear as a task in the Windows task bar?
c) How can I clear the previous content of the pop-up window on susbsequent calls?

Or is there a better way of doing this altogether - via CSS perhaps? My problem with using the title tag alone is that it's not obvious to the user that a hover action will trigger the help and if they follow an instinct to click, the displayed text disappears.

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript" Type="text/javascript">
<!--
function OpenHelpWindow(HelpMsg)  {
  NewWindow=window.open ("", "myWindowTwo", "toolbar=no, menubar=no, width=200, height=100, top=300, left=500, scrollbars=no, resizable=yes");
  NewWindow.document.write('<title>.</title><p style="font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:8.5pt; color=green; }">' + HelpMsg + '</p>');
  NewWindow.document.close;
}
//-->
</SCRIPT>

Thanks in advance

 

[tsdragon]

Sounds like this article I just read in on The Code Project site is just what you need - a pop-up, moveable, changeable "window" using dynamic js:

http://www.codeproject.com/jscript/PseudoPopUp.asp

Tracy Dryden

Meddle not in the affairs of dragons,
For you are crunchy, and good with mustard.

 

[mkrausnick]

Take a look at OverLib

http://www.bosrup.com/web/overlib/

. Very configurable pop-ups. You can make the popup appear on hover or on click, and control its disappearance.

To see how I implemented it, click here. Hovering over individual events pops up a description.

Mike Krausnick
Dublin, California