Displaying Help Tags


Help tags are another form of help. Some applications allow you to get immediate information about GUI elements on the screen by displaying their help tags. If an object has a help tag, it automatically appears when you position the mouse pointer over the object and wait a couple seconds. You can recognize a help tag by its distinctive small yellow box, which contains a very short description of the object under the pointer. If no such box appears when you hover the pointer over an object onscreen, the object has no help tag. You do not have to click anything or press any keys to make a help tag appear. Figure 8-6 shows an example help tag.

click to expand
Figure 8-6: A help tag describes the object under the pointer in a Mac OS X application.

Mac OS X provides help tag capability, but not all objects have help tags. Commonplace objects, such as window controls and scroll bars, have no help tags. Menus and menu items never have help tags. Buttons and other objects have help tags only if the application that they are part of provides descriptions to be displayed inside the help tags. Classic applications cannot provide help tags at all, and many Mac OS X applications do not provide any help tags.

If you have used Balloon Help in Mac OS 9 or earlier, you probably realize that the help tags are the Mac OS X equivalent of Balloon Help. On the downside, help tags provide much less detailed information than Balloon Help. On the upside, help tags are less intrusive and don’t need to be turned on and off.




Mac OS X Bible, Panther Edition
Mac OS X Bible, Panther Edition
ISBN: 0764543997
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 290

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