Sunday, May 29, 2005

Cool Tool Tips: A Better Control Tip Paradigm

In Access, the functionality of tools tips has not changed since they were introduced in Access95 ten years ago.

In a free sample Access2000 database Cool Tool Tips, which you can download, I have implemented a more functional and controllable paradigm, which also looks great. If you have an application that is to any degree complex to use, Cool Tool Tips is an easily-implemented solution that avoids the need for a Help file, and keeps tips on the screen for however long they are needed by the user:

When a control with a tip gets the focus, the tip is read from the control's Tag property, and when the control loses the focus the tip is hidden. Clicking on the tip while it is displayed hides the tip.

A tip's heading and text are separated by a "~" delimiter in the string assigned to a control's Tag property. The string is parsed by a generic public function in a module, called by another generic function behind the form.

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