disable tooltips

[syntaxers]

Does anyone Know how to disable tooltips beacuse they never came on my screen until recently? They are very annoying and hard to navigate the web because they get in the way.


Is it possible to disable the tooltips (ie the little yellow boxes that popup when you hold your mouse over items)? I'm using IE 6 and they come up on just about every website. They come up on links, thumbnails, ...etc

Are the tooltips coming on beacuse I deleted or installed something?

 

[bcastner]

linney,

Fair enough for the original question.

Answer: you need third-party tools to do this.

 

[gpalmer711]

For the

http://www.computing.net/windowsxp/wwwboard/forum/108113.html

site that Bill suggested there is a way to stop the big "tool tip" appearing.

Open notepad then copy and paste the following into it.

.iTt{
visibility:hidden;
position:absolute;
left:-30;
}

save the file as test.css, when saving make sure that notepad does not add .txt to the end.

Now in IE Click on Tools then Internet Options, Click on the accessability button.

Check the box named "Format Documents Using my Style Sheet". Then browse for your test.css file.

Now close your browser window, start IE again and load

http://www.computing.net/windowsxp/wwwboard/forum/108113.html

You should now see a tiny box when you hover over the highlighted words.

This will only work for ads delivered by Vibrant Media (

http://vibrantmedia.com/site/index.html)

But based on the same principle you could repeat the process for any other companies.

Greg Palmer
Free Software for Adminstrators

http://www.palmersoft.co.uk

 

[syntaxers]

I did a little observation and I noticed that most of these tooltips come up when the mouse is on grachics. Take for example google's homepage if my mouse is on the google logo I get a very redundent tooltip that says "google". Another example is when I'm in microsoft's homepage and the mouse is on the banner that says "download a free trial of IIS 6.0" I get the same tooltip that is read on the banner. Also on IE 6 when I'm in favorites and searching for a link, tooltips come on and tells me the name of the link I'm hovering on and the address.

These tooltips are redundent. Does anyone have the same problem with those sites that i gave because it never happened to me before. And beleive me their are more sites with tooltips. Even when I just rest the mouse on a site's background I still get one.

 

[bcastner]

At the moment, only linney claims the ability to set IE to prevent these mouse-overs.

I know I cannot.

 

[syntaxers]

Here try this site

http://www.fireworks.com/fireworks_gallery/category.asp?cid=3

Hover over a picture or a "add to shopping list" icon i get a tooltip that says the exact same thing as the icon or the picture reads.

This is really redundent and annoying. Does anyone else get this?

 

[gpalmer711]

This is just the Alt part of the img tag in the html. Internet explorer has displayed this for years when hovering a mouse over an image. It is really down to the individual designer as the whether they use the alt part of the tag. However it is good design practice to include this part of the tag for visually impaired users.

As for this not being an issue for you in the past, I think you were just lucky as I have never not known a "tool tip" appear.

It might be an idea for MS to include a feature for IE to ignore alt tags??

Greg Palmer
Free Software for Adminstrators

http://www.palmersoft.co.uk

 

[bcastner]

Greg Palmer has come closer now to my argument: if the web site uses ALT or TITLE mouse-over text, I do not know of a way to block this.

These are not the traditional popups that many tools can block. You agreed to visit the site, and one that site the web page designer chose to use mouse-overs.

As I said way above, there was a malware/virus a while ago that could create this as an issue. But fundamentally it is a choice by the the Web page author to include these mouse-over tooltips. I honestly do not know if they can be blocked. I agree they are very annoying.

 

[linney]

only linney claims the ability to set IE to prevent these mouse-overs" No he doesn't. My references were to this at that site you chose, "Well I have spent 5 minutes on that page you linked to, reading about "Hogs in Jam" and didn't notice any green underlines or popup messages."

The mouse-overs being discussed now have been around for ever. If you leave the mouse on them they should vanish after about 5 seconds.

There may even be a registry setting where you can reduce the time length.

 

[bcastner]

linney,

If I mis-stated your view of mouse-overs, my aplologies.

Well I have spent 5 minutes on that page you linked to, reading about "Hogs in Jam" and didn't notice any green underlines or popup messages.

I cannot obtain the same experience. My notes above suggested that the Web site included ALT or TITLE text that was not controllable as mouse-over tooltips under IE.

Your test from my random link above shows that the tooltips do not appear for you. I was curious as to your settings as I cannot figure out how to stop them. The remarkably compentent Greg Palmer suggested one IE entry, that proved insufficient.

The full bcastner argument is that you cannot with IE settings block mouse-overs that are Web page enabled for ALT, TITLE or other methods. Shame one the web page author.

And if you, linney, have a way that works, please let us all know.

 

[linney]

Again I have revisited the "Bcasner" page. I see no double green lines (or little green men) or any popup adds.

There are two small (normal tooltip type messages) as I mouse over the "Reply" or "Main", nothing from "Print". Apart from that nothing else, even from the only static add I see which is an orange one for Runtime.

As to "syntaxers" firework page, there I get lots of the small tooltips all over the page as the mouse passes over. But like I said before this seems pretty normal to me.

 

[bcastner]

linney,

The syntaxer fireworks page to me seems absolutely normal, although on the left panel it shows tooltips.

The bcastner test page still shows (no, not little green men) but the tooltips and double undersores at issue with the original poster.

The full bcastner guess, is that there is not a darn thing you can do about a Web page with mouseovers under IE.

Again, I would love to know what you did to block this.

And I do not want to boil a cabbage twice (twice I got this phrase in).

 

[linney]

I'm as mystified as you as to what (if anything) I am doing or blocking, as I can't see it to know.

I would gladly post great chunks of Registry if you feel it might help, or upload jpg's of any settings in IE.

If you can suggest a reg. key or IE settings tab, thereby narrowing it down a bit, that would be a help.

 

[bcastner]

If you can suggest a reg. key or IE settings tab, thereby narrowing it down a bit, that would be a help.

I honestly do not know of one.

I am sorry that the above discussion appeared to put this on your shoulders. (other than in jest, it was not my intention).

To me it is a Web-site mistake; that mouse-overs are part and parcel of the site design, and the IE settings offer no relief at present.

Bill

 

[linney]

Warning: Parts of this page require the use of scripts, which your browser does not currently allow. Click here for more information on scripts.

http://office.microsoft.com/assistance/hfws.aspx?AssetID=HP010407641033

 

[gpalmer711]

I think an earlier post by linney shows what he is doing to stop the popups

Mind you with my IE settings and firewall settings being rather restrictive that is probably the reason (no java, vbs, activeX or external active content, whatever the last is?)

As the green underline popups on bcastner's site rely on a piece of JavaScript running AFTER the rest of the page has loaded. If that is disabled (as per my corrected post), you should not get the popups.

This will of course cause you all kinds of problems when browsing the rest of the internet due to JavaScript being everywhere.

I'm not even sure how the company that is providing these ads is doing it?? I know they are modifying the content, but whether they are using the Alt tag or something else I don't know. I'm looking into it a bit more though.

Greg Palmer
Free Software for Adminstrators

http://www.palmersoft.co.uk

 

[linney]

Excluding certain sites permanently from the javascript restrictions is easy enough by adding them to trusted sites in my firewall (or doing something similar in IE with the various security zone settings for active scripting). Even turning active scripting on or off is an one click and reload IE job.

 

[bcastner]

If I do the "full linney", under IE, Tools, Internet Options, Security, Custom Level, and set it to High, the bcastner popup test fails.

My thoughts above that you cannot kill these mouse-over popups with IE setting is wrong.


Thank you linney for pushing this issue.

You were dead dog right about it. And I was dead dog wrong about it.

Bill Castner

 

[gpalmer711]

To stop all actuall "tooltips" and the ones displayed on Bcastners site do the following.

Open Notepad.

Copy the following into it

.iTt{
visibility:hidden;
position:absolute;
left:-30;
img 
{    background: expression(this.alt='');
}
img 
{    background: expression(this.title='');
}

Save as noalt.css (make sure notepad does not put .txt at the end)

Now in IE Click on Tools then Internet Options, Click on the accessability button.

Check the box named "Format Documents Using my Style Sheet". Then browse for your test.css file.

Now close your browser window, start IE again and load

http://www.computing.net/windowsxp/wwwboard/forum/108113.html

You should now see a tiny box when you hover over the highlighted words.

Also open

http://www.google.com

and hover over the word google. No Tooltip should appear.

Greg Palmer
Free Software for Adminstrators

http://www.palmersoft.co.uk