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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.
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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.
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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!
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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.