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The ToolTipsFactory is a set of components designed to add visually and functionally sophisticated ToolTips to Windows Forms applications. These  components give application developers the possibility to add really dynamic tooltips to their applications, with single- or multiline text, images or even animations as content. They also give programmers full control over size and layout of the ToolTip's background, border and behaviour.

Why do applications have ToolTips?

ToolTips are a really useful invention. We all know and (in general) like these practical tiny yellow windows that pop-up whenever the mouse pointer hovers over a control in a windows application.  Usually they give a hint about the function of the control (e.g. they answer questions like: "What happens if that button is hit?" or "What for is this checkbox?"). In many cases this hint is enough information for the user of an application to proceed without having to look up the information in the online help or - even worse - take that heavy printed manual from the shelf. In other cases they may show actual information about the state of a program, an operation or process, or they just show the complete information in cases where the control size limits the amount of information that can be shown. These days it is a "must" for a professionally designed application, to provide some kind of ToolTips!

Why does your application need ToolTipsFactory tooltips?

By today, almost all professional development environments offer some kind of tooltip-control to be added to a software-project. But usually these controls are just limited to produce the classical tiny yellow pop-ups. As an application developer you know, that the things you can do with these classical ToolTip controls are quite limited. As a matter of fact, there is no way to change the visual appearance of this little helpers. End-users of applications, which make use of classical ToolTips, are literally doomed to stick their nose into the screen in order to read them. As user AND developer you know this well, but you're looking invane for properties like Fontsize, BackgroundColor, Border etc. in order to provide the users of YOUR applications a better ToolTip-experience.

That's where the ToolTipsFactory comes to the rescue. The ToolTipsFactory ToolTip-components give application developers full control over size and layout of the tooltips. The tooltip layout can be interactively designed in Visual Studio.NET or dynamically configured at run-time. More then forty-five (45) Layout-properties like Font, FontSize, FontColor, BackgroundColor, Border etc. let you create unique ToolTip-layouts, which are not only easily readable, but also perfectly match the layout of your application.

Another shortcoming of the classical tooltip controls is their inability to display other content then text, although there are countless imaginable uses for tooltips that can display much more then single lines of microscopic text. It seems, that the graphical part of the graphical user interface comes to a full stop at the border of the classical tooltips.

Now the ToolTipsFactory finally crosses this barrier and brings the graphics to the last graphic-free areas of our desktops - the tool tips!

 

If you have ever dreamed about showing really dynamic content in your application's ToolTips, no matter if it's text, images or even animations, and having full control over size and layout of the ToolTips content, background, border and behaviour, then you should have a closer look at the following pages, which give an overview of the features and possibilities the ToolTipsFactory offers to professional software developers.

For a short description of the components provided by the ToolTipsFactory: The four assembly lines of the ToolTipsFactory
For a descriptive list of features see:

Features and capabilities of the ToolTipsFactory components

For a first impression on how the ToolTipsFactory components are integrated in Visual Studio, have a look at: Full Visual Studio integration of the ToolTipsFactory
The available license types and pricing information can be found in: ToolTipsFactory Licenses and Pricing
If you want to experience the full potential of the ToolTipsFactory before you buy, you are invited to do so with the fully functional trial version: Download trial version!
The complete ToolTipsFactory documentation with tons of screen-shots and samples can be found in: Online Resources

 

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