ToolTip Class

A ToolTip provides a small rectangular pop-up window that provides a brief description of a control's purpose when the pointer is touching the control.

Properties: (some of them)

• Color BackColor

  This is the background color for the ToolTip.

• Color ForeColor

  This is the foreground color for the ToolTip.

• int InitialDelay

  This is the length of time, a number of milliseconds, that the pointer must remain stationary on the control before the ToolTip pop-up window will appear.

• int AutoPopDelay

  This is the length of time, a number of milliseconds, for which the ToolTip window will remain visible.

• int ReshowDelay

  As the pointer moves from one control to another, this is the amount of time, a number of milliseconds, between the appearance of ToolTip windows.

• int AutomaticDelay This sets the value of InitialDelay, AutoPopDelay and ReshowDelay, all at once:
  • AutoPopDelay = 10 times AutomaticDelay
  • InitialDelay = AutomaticDelay
  • ReShowDelay = 0.2 time AutomaticDelay

• bool Active

  This indicates whether the ToolTip is active (true) or not (false).

• bool OwnerDraw

  This indicates whether the ToolTip will be drawn by the operating system (false) or by code we provide (true).

Methods: (just a couple)

• public void SetToolTip(Control C, String Caption)

  This associates the ToolTip with control C and provides the text Caption to be displayed.

• public String GetToolTip(Control C)

  This returns the text associated with control C).

Example: (from an MSDN page)

// This example assumes that the Form_Load event handling method
// is connected to the Load event of the form.
private void Form1_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
   // Create the ToolTip and associate with the Form container.
   ToolTip toolTip1 = new ToolTip();

   // Set up the delays for the ToolTip.
   toolTip1.AutoPopDelay = 5000;
   toolTip1.InitialDelay = 1000;
   toolTip1.ReshowDelay = 500;

   // Set up the ToolTip text for the Button and Checkbox.
   toolTip1.SetToolTip(this.button1, "My button1");
   toolTip1.SetToolTip(this.checkBox1, "My checkBox1");
}

End of Example

Notes

Notice that in the example we have one ToolTip instance for this form and use it for two controls. Presumably if we wanted different ToolTip windows to have different timing, we could have more than one ToolTip instance.

Why would we want to write our own code to draw the ToolTip window? One reason might be that we want to specify the font used.