Extensible Tooltips Plug-In for Testing

[zleifr]

In case anyone else just would like to more flexibility in your tooltips. Here is an extensible version of Denis' new tooltip plug-in.

You can set:
font
size
color
background color
border color
background and border transparency

Here is a demo with 21 spots to illustrate the capabilities:
http://advancedvirtualtours.com/demo/demo.html

for a hotspot:
alt="tooltip text"
altFont="Geneva" -> font, must be available on client computer
altSize="24" -> font size in pts
altColor="0xFF0000" -> font color (red)
altFill="0x0000FF" -> background color (blue)
altStroke="0x00FF00" -> border color (green)
altAlpha="0.5" -> transparency of background and border (50%)

to set defaults, similar to autorotator:
<tooltips>
altFont=Georgia
altSize=96
altColor=0x000000
altFill=0xFFFFFF
altStroke=0x999999
altAlpha=0.6
</tooltips>

You can specify any font the the client computer will have installed, and if it is not present flash will substitute something like Times.

[cheathamlane]

Very cool zleifr!

I'll stick with the ones I'm already using (yours! :) )... I checked Denis's online example, and (at least on my Mac) performance was sporadic -- tooltips would hang off-screen, appear/disappear erratically. also, when the panorama's quality is set to low/medium, they are very pixelated/jaggy.

[zleifr]

patrick: what do they look like on the demo page i hacked up? I changed some of the anti-aliasing and haven't seen any of that jaggy-ness since. I haven't seen anything I would describe as hanging off the screen on my mac, so I am curious about what you are seeing? Also, my original tool tip plug updated the tooltip every frame, whereas, Denis' design uses a timer, so I think it must skip frames, in the interests of lessening the needed cpu power, I imagine, but also, results in just a bit of latency sometimes.

It could easily be changed to update every frame, for what it is worth.

What do you think about drop shadows? would a drop shadow on the round rectangle look good? or is it too much? Maybe a gaussian blur fuzz behind it?

[cheathamlane]

Hey zleifr:

Hmmm... the ones on your page look OK :) -- I tried panning and tilting crazily, but they loaded in fie; the delay before appearance helps.

One of the tips with lots of dingbats in it hung a little bit off the edge of the screen (safari), but not noticeably. I honestly haven't played with the plugin too much yet, so can't give a good educated 2 cents yet. ;)

Drop shadows? I love 'em. I think being able to tap in not only to yes/no about drop-shadow, but also the fuzziness and strength of it is good.

They're starting to look/act very similar to the afcomponents ones. Nice!

Cheers,

[HansNyberg]

Ad a fullscreen button so that you can see if your mouseover works in fullscreen in Safari.

Hans

[zleifr]

Hans:
Done, and it's not working for me, safari kills all mouse events in fullscreen except click, I think it is the flash debug plug-in maybe, since it was working a while ago, and back then I had the "normal" flash plug-in

[cheathamlane]

I just checked from my Macbook w/o the debug player installed -- and I get the same functionality. That is, mouseover events in fullscreen become click events.

This is Safari 2.0.4 (419.3), OS X 10.4.10. The same thing happens from my G5 running Safari 3.0.3 (522.12.1) and OS X 10.4.10, with the debug version of the player.

[steve]

Hi zleifr,

first of all: very,very,cool plugin...Tooltips with the look you like...

Just one thing: Tooltip plugin works fine with rollover, but if I click on the hotspot in the panorama, the tooltips are (sometimes) still sticking at the mousepointer in the next panorama. They only disapear/change, if I move the mouse over the next hotspot.

Any idea? Perhaps a onClick event(fade out tooltips, just like rollout) in your plugin would be solve this problem...
Haven`t tested it online, but offline it doesn`t work...

Steve

[Aifos]

PERFECT!!!
i was just about to post asking how to change font, size, color, etc... and to add other letters form other lenguages... for example "с" in spanish and accents!

zleifr, you are a genius! many thanks!

[zleifr]

Steve: Can you find any rhyme or reason to the ones that don't fade?

Or maybe post a link to the pano, so I can talk a look.

Does the spot exist in the new pano? If not, that might be the problem, as then the spot would have been unloaded, thereby short-circuiting the process.

Does the same thing happen with Denis', as this one is simply an extension of his...

[zleifr]

aifos: "с" -> I'd guess it would be the ascii code, so you could try &164; in the text in place of с, or you might just try с and see what happens.

[Aifos]

aifos: "с" -> I'd guess it would be the ascii code, so you could try &164; in the text in place of с, or you might just try с and see what happens.

zleifr, with denis tooltip, с just didnґt appear.. but with yours, no problem.

[steve]

Hi zleifr,

thanks for answering and helping to find the problem...

The tooltip stays as a mouse follow in the second panorama if I click on the hotspot in the first panorama and don`t move my cursor when I clicked the hotspot.

If I click the hotspot and move my cursor before the next panorama is loaded the tooltips fade out...

I tried to solve the problem if I change the alt text by using the onPress event in the FPP (like the autorotator):
onPress="external.tooltips.altAlpha=0;" ...but that doesn`t work...

I haven`t tried Denis version yet, Iґve got to less oportunities to change the look of my tooltips...

Steve

Tested on IE and FF!

[panomir]

thank you Denis and zleifr for this great tool!
here is my first test with tooltips > http://panograph.free.fr/capitole_flash/capitole.html
(this is the wedding room, inside the Capitole, Toulouse's city hall)

xml > http://panograph.free.fr/capitole_flash/illustres.xml

[Virtualguide]

Zleifr, nice job, I appreciatte Your sence for humour...

Lorem ipsum and such ... :)

Igor

[zleifr]

Ok, by request and to fix a but, here is a new version.

The offset of the tooltip is now adjustable:

altXOffset="x"
altYOffset="y"

The default value is x offset of -8, and y offset of 20, and remember in flash positive y is down, which matches the Denis' original.

Also, if a new pano is loaded the hotspot should automatically disappear when the new pano appears, if it doesn't disappear on mouse out before then, which should fix Steve's problem.

Test away!

[myp3ilka]

The problem is exist yet.

First pano
http://vtours.ru/files/2forum/tooltip_1.jpg

Next pano
http://vtours.ru/files/2forum/tooltip_2.jpg

[steve]

Yep,Yep,Yep...it works...

No more problems in IE and FF with the sticking tooltip in the next panorama....Steve`s problems are solved...

Thanks a lot zleifr for your new version and helping to solve my problem


Feature request for modification:

- tooltips appear to the left, right or in the middle under the mousepointer
- images could be implemented. At the top is the image, under the image is the tooltip.
- rectangle or rounded angles of the tooltips

Possible? Just an Idea...

Steve

[zleifr]

Steve: Yes all those are possible and these two:
altXOffset="x"
altYOffset="y"
should address this:
tooltips appear to the left, right or in the middle under the mousepointer

myp3ilka: can you post a link to that, so I can see it, as I am not sure why that would be happening, still.

Zephyr

[steve]

zleifr: If I write your new parameter

altXOffset="x"
altYOffset="y"

in my xml file, the tooltips appear on the top left corner of the panorama, doesn`t matter which number I have as "x" or "y"... Anyway:far away of my mousepointer...

Steve

[myp3ilka]

myp3ilka: can you post a link to that, so I can see it, as I am not sure why that would be happening, still.

Zephyr

http://vtours.ru/files/new/sample.html

http://vtours.ru/files/new/sample.xml

when first pano appear place cursor on hotspot (left black arrow) and click on it but don't touch mouse.

I've test it in IE, Opera, Firefox and have the same bug.

[Aifos]

BUG!!!
when over the spot, the text appear, onout it desappears.... ok perfect.
but, the area where the text appeared is not clickable for dragging the pano...
check out this: www.visitarosario.com/teatrocirculo

go over the arrow-spot, the text will appear, and then go out... remember where the area where the text appeared and try to move the pano, clicking on that area.
it doesnґt move.

now, move the pano clicking on other area.
go over the spotm then out.... drag the pano on the new area covered by the text.... it doesnґt move.



solutionsї

[zleifr]

Aifos: That's a feature not a bug. Why in the world would you want to click on the spot where the tooltip WAS to move the pano. That's the tooltip's spot, see. It's the best feature of the tooltips plugin.

just kidding. it is fixed, but there is a very very slight delay when you still can't click on it.


So here is the most current version.

[Aifos]

Aifos: That's a feature not a bug. Why in the world would you want to click on the spot where the tooltip WAS to move the pano. That's the tooltip's spot, see. It's the best feature of the tooltips plugin.
juajajsaus.... i thought you were talking seriusly...

tooltipsZ_aifos.zip and you dedicated it to me!!! aaah! hehehe


thanks!

[Rick Workman]

I've just picked up the extensible tooltips plugin - very useful and simple to use; at least the way I'm using it.

I did find it useful to turn the fade off for performance reasons. It's very simple to create a new version that does this (alphaMin=1 instead of alphaMin=-1.4). But it would be nice if an attribute was added this to be configured via XML.

Just a suggestion,

Rick

[cheathamlane]

Hey Rick:

You should post this as a "feature request" comment over at flashpanos.com!

( http://flashpanos.com/plugins/zephyr/extensible-tooltips )

Cheers,

[zaroundus]

I have the panorama player embedded in another SWF and I'm using your Tooltips plugin. When the flash player is loaded in an HTML page the tooltips work just fine. When I load the player with the same XML in my SWF the tooltip text ceases to appear. Any ideas?