Welcome to the Abstraction Systems ToolTipsFactory for .NET
Welcome to the Abstraction
Systems ToolTipsFactory for .Net, a set of components designed to add visually and
functionally sophisticated ToolTips to your Windows Forms applications.
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. "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 just show the
complete information in cases where the control size limits the amount of information that can
be shown.
Of course there are many
more ways to use the classical ToolTips, and - as a software developer -you may have used them all.
But as a developer maybe you also made the experience, that the things you can do with the
classical ToolTip control, as it is provided by the .NET-Framework, are quiet limited.
As a matter of fact, there is no way to change the visual appearance of this little
helpers. As an end-user of programs, that make use of classical ToolTips,
you are doomed to literally stick your nose into the screen in order to read them.
As user AND developer you know this, 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.
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 chapters which
give an overview of the features and possibilities the ToolTipsFactory offers to
professional software developers.