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 attaches to a Button control using SetToolTip method.
  1. ToolTip toolTip1 = newToolTip();
  2. toolTip1.ShowAlways = true;
  3. toolTip1.SetToolTip(button1, "Click me to execute.");
If you rollover on Button control, you will see the following output.
ToolTipImg1.jpg
Figure 1
Tooltip Properties
  • Active - A tooltip is currently active.
  • AutomaticDelay - Automatic delay for the tooltip.
  • AutoPopDelay - The period of time the ToolTip remains visible if the pointer is stationary on a control with specified ToolTip text.
  • InitialDelay - Gets or sets the time that passes before the ToolTip appears.
  • IsBaloon - Gets or sets a value indicating whether the ToolTip should use a balloon window.
  • 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.
  • ShowAlways - Displays if tooltip is displayed even if the parent control is not active.
  • ToolTipIcon - Icon of tooltip window.
  • ToolTipTitle - Title of tooltip window.
  • UseAnimation - Represents whether an animation effect should be used when displaying the tooltip.
  • UseFading - Represents whether a fade effect should be used when displaying the tooltip.
The following code snippet sets some of these properties.
  1. ToolTip buttonToolTip = newToolTip();
  2. buttonToolTip.ToolTipTitle = "Button Tooltip";
  3. buttonToolTip.UseFading = true;
  4. buttonToolTip.UseAnimation = true;
  5. buttonToolTip.IsBalloon = true;
  6. buttonToolTip.ShowAlways = true;
  7. buttonToolTip.AutoPopDelay = 5000;
  8. buttonToolTip.InitialDelay = 1000;
  9. buttonToolTip.ReshowDelay = 500;
  10. buttonToolTip.SetToolTip(button1, "Click me to execute.");
Balloon Tooltip

By setting IsBalloon to true it makes a tooltip balloon that looks like Figure 2.
ToolTipImg2.jpg
Figure 2
Summary

In this article, we discussed how to create a Tooltip control in Windows Forms and set its various properties.