Nice Titles and Patterns

Comments

1. You make good points here. There is something to be said for consistency in how browser widgets like tooltips work, not consistency across browsers, but, as you were saying, within each. Of course there’s an extreeme to the consistency mantra, because (as we know) each website is an interface, and each of these interfaces tends to be very different (much to some folks shagrin). The question is then, where does the fuzzy line of consistency-benifit meetup with the fuzzy line of customization-for-a-purpose and even aesthetic license? I can see how some folks might be put off by a re-application of an existing widget like tooltips, but if the same information, or in this case more information is provided, does this override concerns of consistency? I’m not sure.

   Nate on 14 Feb 03

2. My take on it is a bit more personal: Mozilla (or in my case Phoenix) has the bizarre idea that element titles should only show the first (some number) of characters, so things like Anil’s linklog are only partly usable. Since it’s generally easier to change the behavior of nearly every site designer on the planet than it is to change Mozilla developers’ minds, I’m going to do what I can to encourage people to use NiceTitles. Not only do I get to read the whole thing, they actually stay visible, rather than disappearing without my consent like tooltip titles do. That may be appropriate behavior for UI tooltips (especially if they are used right, and are a single word), but for link titles as they are used, it sucks.

   The lack of a startup delay is a shame, but for some reason there’s just no good way to do a wait(500) in Javascript, particularly not one that would cooperate with the way that during that half a second you might mouseout from that link, and mouseover another ten links (followed by a trail of delayed NiceTitles, yech).

   Phil Ringnalda on 15 Feb 03

3. You could always use some PHP and sessions to give user the option, but then you bring up even more usability and privacy issues, where will it all stop?

   Blaine on 17 Feb 03

4. Çà n’a pas dû être facile :) Mais une recherche sur “Nice Titles” et un trackback Joshua me donnent ici l’occasion de reformuler (in french) un peu l’observation qu’il présente sur son blog à propos du widget de Stuart Landridge :

   TrackBack from on 20 Feb 03

5. I did some testing and Nice Titles doesn’t work in Safari (v60) or Mac IE5 (and doesn’t throw any errors). But it does work in Chimera (0.6) and PC IE6 (6.0.2800) so I think it’s implementable as a feature that could be useful to many people.

   Phil is right about the delay, and the deal with the Nice Titles staying put as long as I hover is a good thing. The time limit on title attribute display (in PC IE) seems arbitrary to me.

   Dan on 21 Feb 03

6. I have implemented Nice titles. Nice titles is a cute hack by Stuart Landgridge. It replaces the title attritbute within links with a transparent png. It is the newest, greatest thing and all the coolest bloggers are using it :wink:. In reality, it doe…

   TrackBack from TooMuchSexy.blog on 22 Feb 03

This the personal website of Joshua Kaufman, an interaction designer living in San Francisco. I blog about design, technology, products and getting things done. I also occasionally publish projects. Most of my web activity is available on FriendFeed. You can contact me via email at or otherwise.

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