BeautyTips Demo

This is the simplest example. No arguments are sent and the default settings are used to create a tip which appears on the side with the most space.

Tip appears above the element when it is clicked. The contents of tip is provided when creating the tip.

This example uses the contentSelector attribute to determine where the content comes from. In this case the selector is $(this).attr('href') and the content is the href attribute of the hovered link. Other options define a red balloon with bold white text. The box will be a variable width up to 400px ("width: 'auto' in cssStyles makes text box shrink-to-fit) with rounded corners. The script will try to position the box to the left, then to the right, and finally it will place it on the bottom if it does not fit elsewhere.

There are four different functions which can be triggered at different points in the lifetime of a beautyTip: preShow, postShow, preHide, and postHide.

In this example, a function is triggered to change the content of the target element before the tip is shown. After the tip is hidden, another function changes the content back. this in these function refers to the target element. These functions could be used for just about anything.

When the BeautyTip is active, an additional class is added to the target element. This class, called "activeClass", can be defined when calling the bt() function. Additionally, each BeautyTip popup has a wrapper div which surrounds its content. The class on this div is also definable.

Note that the BeautyTip "balloon" itself is drawn as a bitmap using canvas methods and functions similar to an <img> element, so it can not be affected by CSS. There are many options for changing this element using JavaScript options though.

The BeautyTip balloons are drawn dynamically and highly configurable. Customizable attributes include background color and opacity, stroke width and color, spike length and width, corner radius, and more. For convenience, style attributes such as font color and weight can be sent through the JavaScript call as well.

Images can be loaded into the BeautyTip. You should, however, add width and height attributes (or use CSS for this) so that the browser will know what size to "save space for" as the image loads.

This example also uses some special triggers so that the tip appears on mouseover, but disappears using click. BeautyTips' default clickAnywhereToClose option also allows the user to click anywhere in the document (outside of the tip) in order to close it. This can be disabled either globally or per tip.

$('#example16').bt('', { width: 200, fill: 'white', cornerRadius: 20, padding: 20, strokeWidth: 1, trigger: ['mouseover', 'click'] });

The trigger is what causes the tip to appear/disappear. The default option is 'hover', which will trigger the tip when the mouse hovers over an element. If the hoverintent plugin is installed (as on this page), that will become the default trigger and there will be slight (but configurable) delay before the tip appears.

In this example, the trigger events for this textfield are 'focus' and 'blur'. This means that the tip will get triggered even if the user uses the tab key to enter/leave this form field.

In this example, 'keyup' triggers the display of the tip while 'blur' removes it. This means that the tip won't appear until the user actually changes the field (using the keyboard).

The full list of trigger events are: blur, focus, load, resize, scroll, unload, click, dblclick, mousedown, mouseup, mousemove, mouseover, mouseout, mouseenter, mouseleave, change, select, submit, keydown, keypress, keyup, and error. However not all events are available for all elements (see: events documentation).

This tip is initiated with a trigger of 'none'. All of the options are set, but turn on/off of the tip isn't bound to any event. We can, however, turn on and off the tip using Javascript. $('#example15').btOn(); turns it on. $('#example15').btOff(); turns it off. These btOn() and btOff() functions are available for all elements which have been set up using the bt() function. So, we can programmatically turn on any BeautyTip on the page. Click here to turn on the tip from the previous example.

The hoverIntent plugin allows control over how and when the mouseOver event gets triggered when a user hovers over an element. In this example, the interval has been cranked up to 1 second, so the user needs to hover for almost a second before the tip appears. The timeout has been raised to 2 seconds so the tip will remain visible for that long before disappearing.

Content comes from the #content div of the html page: demo-ajax.html. Note: this isn't really ajax, it's actually ahah (asynchronous HTML and HTTP). Ahah is much easier to deal with than ajax (which technically uses XML).

Requested ajax page doesn't exist. This example uses a custom error message. This example may not work correctly if you have opened the file locally (without a web server).

AjaxPath is being read from the 'href' value of the link. This is accomplished by defining the ajaxPath as an array. The first value of the array is the jQuery code to find the path value (in this case "$(this).attr('href')"). The optional second value of the array is the content selector within the loaded page (in this case 'div#content'). This is a handy way of adding "preview" BeautyTips to a bunch of links on a page.

A popup with lots of content. This popup gets populated from a div which immediately follows this text in the html source, but gets hidden by the same script which defines the BeautyTip. This is a good way to provide degradable help which appears for users with JavaScript disabled.

Animation can be added by creating a custom showTip or hideTip function. Each function gets an argument of box, which is a reference to the .bt-wrapper div around the tip. The box element is set to display: none, so your code will presumably use animation methods to show it. The this variable in each function refers to the target (hovered, clicked, focused, etc) element. The hideTip function gets a second argument of callback. This is a reference to the cleanup function and MUST be triggered at the end of the hideTip animation.

It appears that this animation doesn't work correctly in Internet Explorer. This is most likely a bug somewhere between jQuery and Explorer Canvas. It does degrade to non-animated functionality though. Ironically, the complex animation example below works better in IE.

At the time that showTip is triggered, the tip is hidden (display: none) but completely built, positioned, and ready to go. If we want to animate its position, size, or other attributes, we need to create variables representing the current attributes so that we know where to end our animation. In this example, we're animating the size of the canvas (the bitmap drawing of the tip) as well as it's left and top position so that it remains centered as its size animates.

In order to keep the animation efficient, the content (the text) is hidden during the animation and appears after the animation is finished.

hideTip works in reverse. The callback gets called at the end of the animation to cleanup the box, removing it from the DOM and getting things ready for the next time the tip is triggered.

Drop shadows are part of the canvas spec, but they are not implemented by many browsers. Drop shadows currently only work in Safari and Firefox 3.5 and higher. Eventually I would like to create canvas-drawn drop shadows that should work in all browsers, but for the time being, keep in mind that these won't work in all browsers. However, for these non-drop-shadow browsers, you can define "no shadow options" (noShadowOpts) to define how the tip should be displayed if shadows aren't supported.

Netflix-style big descriptive popups using ajax.

Google Maps balloons! Content is provided by a hidden div on the page. Note the use of centerPointX to adjust where the spike extends from. We're also using a close-box "x" image in the content which is a javascript link to close the tip.

Address:

123 Main St.

Seekonk, MA 02771

Get directions: To here - From here

Search nearby - Save to My Maps

Edit

Facebook-style.

Hulu style. Use Safari or Firefox 3.5+ to get the full effect with the drop shadow.