CssTt

CssTt provides a simple way for creating pure css based tooltips. It was inspired by Alexander Dawson post sixrevisions.com/css/css-only-tooltips/ and some Alex Hall improvements www.devseo.co.uk/examples/pure-css-tooltips/, so I just wraped that up to a simple Rails plugin.

Instalation

(sudo) gem install css_tt

Then

script/generate css_tt

which will generate css files and copy icon images to your public dir.

You will also need to add css to any layout header you will use css_tt in.

<%= stylesheet_link_tag 'css_tt' %>

<%= stylesheet_link_tag 'application', 'your_css_files', 'css_tt', :cache => 'cached_css' %>

and add

config.gem "css_tt"

in your environment.rb file

Example

css_tt() helper method returns a html markup which with help of css makes tooltips for given string

Use helper in your views e.g.:

<%= css_tt("I am text to be explained on hover", "I am the text in tooltip") %>

This will generate a classic popup

Some options are available for tooltips, like :type, :transition and :title

:type => possible options are :classic, :critical, :help, :warning an :info. Type defines the look of the tooltip and if other than classic adds an icon. Types are quite self explainable
:transition => works only for webkit based browsers (i.e. Chrome, Safari), but is unobtrusive and does nothing on other browsers, because it’s css based
:title => tootip title, optional

You can use tooltips for whatever inline html element you want and add any inline elements inside the tooltip.

<%= css_tt(link_to(smth, path), 
        "<b>find</b> more #{link_to('here', path)}", 
        :type => :info,
        :title => "Outside link",
        :transition => :left) %>

How do these look like www.devseo.co.uk/examples/pure-css-tooltips/

Future

In the future I expect to add more optional tooltip styles to css_tt

TODO

Tutorial-like demo page
Option to add css file link tag to layout file while generating
Add more fancy stuff

Collaboration

If you are a good designer, have some css styles for tooltips and want them in this gem, pm me github.com/medwezys. Keep in mind that the structure of tooltip styles should be simmilar i.e. types - classic, info, warning, critical, help and so on. These are defined using css classes. More info in Alexander Dawson post sixrevisions.com/css/css-only-tooltips/