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Tooltips need a delay, and then they need to skip it

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Re: Tooltips need a delay, and then they need to skip it

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a Catholic church site I designed you have to do the cross pattern with your mouse and say 3 Hail Marys to see the tooltip. There is no contact form. Only a Confession Textarea

At least the cookie popup comes with wine

Hold up, we've got to remember our recursive acronyms here: "WINE Is Not a Eucharist".

Re: Tooltips need a delay, and then they need to skip it

#52
post #8

I think I would describe this as an example of hysteresis. Neat! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteresis

Umm, either I'm misunderstanding or this holds for nearly every UI everywhere, no? Like if I click "reply" on HN I'm moved to the screen I now type this comment in. That means my current state depends on history, too, no?

Re: Tooltips need a delay, and then they need to skip it

#54
post #8

I think I would describe this as an example of hysteresis. Neat! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteresis

>> Hysteresis is the dependence of the state of a system on its history. For example, a magnet may have more than one possible magnetic moment in a given magnetic field, depending on how the field changed in the past. How is this different from the observation that, say, a non-magnetic iron ball may have more than one possible velocity in a given gravitional field, depending on whether it was recently thrown upward o…

A ball dropped near the earth's surface will always fall towards the centre of the earth at ~9.81m/s^2 no matter what it has done previously.

A chunk of iron put into a 1μT magnetic field will behave differently depending on what other magnetic fields it has been in recently.

Re: Tooltips need a delay, and then they need to skip it

#56
post #8

I think I would describe this as an example of hysteresis. Neat! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteresis

>> Hysteresis is the dependence of the state of a system on its history. For example, a magnet may have more than one possible magnetic moment in a given magnetic field, depending on how the field changed in the past. How is this different from the observation that, say, a non-magnetic iron ball may have more than one possible velocity in a given gravitional field, depending on whether it was recently thrown upward o…

Hysteresis is nonlinear.

Re: Tooltips need a delay, and then they need to skip it

#58

It will never cease to amaze to me that Apple (under Jef Raskin who also wrote about this in The Humane Interface) observed and fixed problems with interactions like this in SYSTEM 6 in like 1993 or something - only for the same problem to have to be re-descovered and re-fixed decades later.

Raskin left Apple in 1982.

Even more amazing!

(Raskin left before even the original macintosh he helped lead. He also opposed the use of the mouse)

Re: Tooltips need a delay, and then they need to skip it

#59

It will never cease to amaze to me that Apple (under Jef Raskin who also wrote about this in The Humane Interface) observed and fixed problems with interactions like this in SYSTEM 6 in like 1993 or something - only for the same problem to have to be re-descovered and re-fixed decades later.

This is also how tooltips in Windows XP behave too. Tooltips fade in on cold hover, and subsequent hovers show the tooltips with zero delay.

I like how these things are "figured out" and then fleshed out bit by bit like they're some kind of innovation. Software industry in a nutshell.

Re: Tooltips need a delay, and then they need to skip it

#60
post #48

I'm always amazed by solutions for user interactions. I once built a Bomberman clone that had control issues. The first iteration of the controls were clunky, because I only checked if a player was touching a block in the direction they wanted to move and if there was, I reset the position. Move down, hit block, stop. After a bit of experimenting I checked if a player was halfway behind or ahead of a block and added…

In FPS maps like Quake you only realized how much invisible clip blocks the map makers put in once you play an amateur map that doesn't have them. You hit things, get stuck and can even get crushed and die. Or you can try and play an early version of some popular multiplayer map that doesn't have them and it's way less playable.

A lot of new creators of course will not believe you if you tell you have to do these affordances. I once tested a person's multiplayer map where a door had a central lip that crushed you if you entered off-center. I told them that it should be fixed, but the answer was "you should always go through doors through the center". It's some sort of very enticing idea of purity. "My map will only have real architecture and no affordances." In the end it will self correct.

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