Tooltip

A tooltip is a message box that is displayed when a user hovers over or gives focus to a UI element. The tool tip should be paired with an interactive UI element like a button. Tooltips should be used sparingly and contain succinct, supplementary information. Although Carbon tooltips used to allow for interactive elements such as buttons and links, do not include these elements in tooltips and use toggle tip instead.

Toggletips and tooltips are similar visually and both contain a popover and interactive trigger element. The two components differ in the way they are invoked and dismissed and if the user must interact with the contents. A tooltip is exposed on hover or focus when you need to expose brief, supplemental information that is not interactive. A toggletip is used on click or enter when you need to expose interactive elements, such as button, that a user needs to interact with.

The exception here is that definition tooltip can be invoked on hover or click depending on use case.

The container of the tooltip may be aligned to start, center or end to keep the container from bleeding off the page or covering important information. The UI trigger button and caret tip should be vertically center with each other to clearly associate the tooltip and the trigger. This is especially helpful when multiple elements are close to each other.

Tooltip directions by default are set to auto. Upon opening, tooltips can detect the edges of the browser to properly be placed in view so the container does not get cutoff. Tooltips can instead use specific directions and may be positioned right, left, bottom, or top to the trigger item. Do not cover related content that is essential to the user’s tasks. Tooltips should not bleed off page or behind other content.

For toggletips that are inline with other text, like a definition toggletip, do not obstruct words to the left and right of the trigger word. When the toggletip is active, ensure popover overlays other content and is not cut off by other surrounding components or bleeds off the page where some content is not visible.

For further content guidance, see Carbon’s content guidelines.

The tooltip component has two states: active and inactive. By default, the tooltip is hidden and inactive. Tooltips are displayed on hover and focus. Definition tooltips can be displayed either on hover and focus or on click and enter.

Tooltips are triggered when the mouse hovers over or focuses on the UI trigger. The tooltip persists as long as the mouse remains over the active container or the UI trigger. The tooltip is dismissed by hovering away or moving focus to another element. Definition tooltip can additionally be activated on click or enter and dismissed by clicking outside of active container or UI element.

Users can trigger a tooltip by focusing on element. Addtionally, a definition tooltip can be triggered by using the enter key. A tooltip dismissible by use of the escape key.

VoiceOver: Users can trigger a button to open a popover by pressing enter or space while the button has focus.

JAWS: Users can trigger a button to open a popover by pressing enter or space while the button has focus.

NVDA: Users can trigger a button to open a popover by pressing enter or space while the button has focus.

A standard tooltip is used to provide more information to help a user complete a task and is always paired with an interactive UI element such as a button or link.

An icon button tooltip is used to describe the function or action of an icon button that has no label to provide clarity on what the button will do.

The definition tooltip provides inline additional help or defines a term. It may be used on the label of a UI element, on a word embedded in a paragraph, or in compact spaces such as data tables where icons clutter the UI. You can use definition tooltips on headers, body copy, or labels.

Definition tooltip is unique in that if offers both a hover or click interaction depending on specific use cases. If a user needs only a few seconds to gather their information and go, use a hover interaction. If a user needs time to think about the content or the tooltip is placed in a way that a user can unintentionally tigger the tooltip, then a click interaction would be more appropriate.

Popovers are used as a base layer in some of our components like tooltips, overflow menus, and dropdown menus. For further guidance, see Carbon’s popover component.

Disclosures use popovers as a base layer. Disclosures are comprised of a popover container, text, and interactive elements. Interactive elements are kept in the tab order of the page. For further guidance, see Carbon’s disclosure pattern.

Toggletip uses the disclosure pattern to toggle the visibility of a popover. This popover may contain a variety of information, from descriptive text to interactive elements. For further guidance, see Carbon’s toggletip component.

Chart tooltips appears when a cursor is positioned over an element on Carbon’s data viz charts, such as a data point, icon button, or truncated text. These are inherent behaviors built into our chart components. Refer to chart anatomy to learn more about using tooltips in charts.

Alita Joyce, Tooltip Guidelines (Nielsen Norman Group, 2019)

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