A tooltip is a small pop-up window that displays some information when you rollover on a control.
In this article, I will discuss how to create and use a Tooltip control in a Windows Forms application using Visual Studio 2010. After that, I will discuss various properties and methods available for the Tooltip control.
Creating a Tooltip
Tooltip class represents a tooltip control. Once a Tooltip object is created, we need to call SetToolTip method and pass a control and text. The following code snippet creates a Tooltip and attach to a Button control using SetToolTip method.
ToolTip toolTip1 = new ToolTip();
toolTip1.ShowAlways = true;
toolTip1.SetToolTip(button1, "Click me to execute.");
If you rollover on Button control, you will see the following output.
Figure 1
Tooltip Properties
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Active - A tooltip is currently active.
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AutomaticDelay - Automatic delay for the tooltip.
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AutoPopDelay - The period of time the ToolTip remains visible if the pointer is stationary on a control with specified ToolTip text.
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InitialDelay - Gets or sets the time that passes before the ToolTip appears.
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IsBaloon - Gets or sets a value indicating whether the ToolTip should use a balloon window.
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ReshowDelay - Gets or sets the length of time that must transpire before subsequent ToolTip windows appear as the pointer moves from one control to another.
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ShowAlways - Displays if tooltip is displayed even the parent control is not active.
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ToolTipIcon - Icon of tooltip window.
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ToolTipTitle - Title of tooltip window.
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UseAnimation - Represents weather an animation effect should be used when displaying the tooltip.
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UseFading - Represents weather a fade effect should be used when displaying the tooltip.
The following code snippet sets some of these properties.
ToolTip buttonToolTip = new ToolTip();
buttonToolTip.ToolTipTitle = "Button Tooltip";
buttonToolTip.UseFading = true;
buttonToolTip.UseAnimation = true;
buttonToolTip.IsBalloon = true;
buttonToolTip.ShowAlways = true;
buttonToolTip.AutoPopDelay = 5000;
buttonToolTip.InitialDelay = 1000;
buttonToolTip.ReshowDelay = 500;
buttonToolTip.SetToolTip(button1, "Click me to execute.");
Balloon Tooltip
By setting IsBalloon to true makes a tooltip balloon that looks like Figure 2.
Figure 2
Summary
In this article, we discussed discuss how to create a Tooltip control in Windows Forms and set its various properties.