Tooltip for disabled controls

Philipp Dörfler phdoerfler at gmail.com
Thu Apr 4 14:48:01 PDT 2013 

As far as I understood the original mail, tooltips for disabled controls do require the processing of events for those controls, too.

Besides that, there is something else you might consider:
Imagine an application which does not use tooltips but an dedicated box with explanatory text in it, automatically explaining what the control under the mouse cursor is used for (A fancy alternative to tooltips).
This would be trivial to implement if disabled controls would receive events, too.

~ philipp

Am 04.04.2013 um 23:40 schrieb Tom Schindl <tom.schindl at bestsolution.at>:

> I think we start to mix different things. Disabled control should NOT receive events but they should show tooltips. Disabled controls in SWT does not receive any events!
> 
> Tom
> 
> On 04.04.13 23:34, Philipp Dörfler wrote:
>> Eclipse shows tooltips for disabled buttons, too.
>> 
>> ~ philipp
>> 
>> Am 04.04.2013 um 23:08 schrieb Sven Reimers <sven.reimers at gmail.com>:
>> 
>>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> Well, looking at my favorite IDE (NetBeans Swing) I get tooltips on the
>>> disabled buttons in the toolbar (anybody interested in checking with
>>> Intellij or Eclipse?).
>>> 
>>> At least it seems as if Swing provides this feature - so is it really that
>>> bad design?
>>> 
>>> I have to check our own big Swing-based app, but I think I can follow
>>> Scott's idea - sometimes it is easy to guide the user by displaying info on
>>> hovering with the mouse (maybe this behavior gets deprecated with touch?)
>>> 
>>> So I am still in for a disucssion if this is technically feasible.
>>> 
>>> -Sven
>>> 
>>> P.S. I can see people coming from Swing saying - "JavaFX? No Tooltips on
>>> disabled controls? Even Swing did this by default" ;-)
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 8:08 PM, Scott Palmer <swpalmer at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> I find it bizarre that this is being considered as "bad design".  It
>>>> depends on how it is used.  Users find the feedback helpful. I use the
>>>> pattern extensively with positive results. It avoids confusion for the
>>>> users (always a good thing).
>>>> 
>>>> When I have a complex form, where some choices invalidate others, Tooltips
>>>> are great to explain why certain choices can't be made. You don't want to
>>>> hide the disabled controls because it is very useful information for the
>>>> user to see that the options can be available in some cases.  The form can
>>>> already be complex, so trying to fit these messages into the normal layout
>>>> just makes it awkward.
>>>> 
>>>> I also have cases where some options are simply read-only depending on the
>>>> situation.  For consistency I still show the same control as when they
>>>> aren't read-only.  The tooltip explains why the value can't be changed.
>>>> For TextField I can actually set it to non-editable. But for checkbox
>>>> there is no such option.
>>>> 
>>>> I think the concept of "disabled" on a Node is not the same concept as
>>>> disabled on a Control. For the Node case I agree with it not getting
>>>> events.  For the Control case I just don't want the control to be active.
>>>> 
>>>> I do have ways to workaround this for some controls. As mentioned, a
>>>> TextField can be made non-editable instead.  But with a button it's more of
>>>> a hack.
>>>> 
>>>> Of course *the framework shouldn't be dictating design* anyway.
>>>> 
>>>> That said, I expect the combination of me being out numbered and more
>>>> importantly the difficulty of the fix, means that I'm going to lose this
>>>> one.
>>>> 
>>>> Scott
>>>> 
>>>> On 2013-04-04, at 11:38 AM, "Will Hoover" <java.whoover at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> -1
>>>>> I don't think supporting the use of tooltips on disabled controls is a
>>>> good design pattern to follow (not to mention the overhead of typically
>>>> unnecessary event propagation). If the behavior is really desired they can
>>>> use option #3 or a similar solution using an icon/image with tooltip
>>>> adjacent to the control.
>>>>> 
>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>> From: openjfx-dev-bounces at openjdk.java.net [mailto:
>>>> openjfx-dev-bounces at openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of Pavel Safrata
>>>>> Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2013 9:34 AM
>>>>> To: openjfx-dev at openjdk.java.net
>>>>> Subject: Tooltip for disabled controls
>>>>> 
>>>>> Hello,
>>>>> we've got a request to support tooltips for disabled controls. Tooltip
>>>> can be used to explain why the control is disabled which sounds reasonable.
>>>> Jira: https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-28850
>>>>> 
>>>>> We have the disableProperty on Node. When a node is disabled, it is not
>>>> picked, so no mouse events are delivered to it, so tooltip can't be shown
>>>> as it is based on mouse events.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Perhaps not delivering events to a disabled node was a bad decision.
>>>>> First, there are use-cases where disabled node wants them (showing
>>>> tooltip). Second, for ignoring node during picking we have the
>>>> mouseTransparent flag and it would be nicer if these two flags were
>>>> orthogonal (the reason they're not is probably that mouseTransparent is
>>>> much younger). But the behavior can't be easily changed - controls, and
>>>> possibly other nodes in user apps, rely on the existing behavior.
>>>>> 
>>>>> There are three basic approaches.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 1. Make the events delivered to the disabled nodes. We would either
>>>> break backward compatibility (and fix controls), or introduce yet another
>>>> flag, something like pickIfDisabled. Then we would enable picking for the
>>>> disabled control which would make the tooltip work. But it would make the
>>>> entire control work, so we would somehow have to disable other event
>>>> handling for such controls.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 2. Don't change event delivery and rather introduce some control-layer
>>>> solution specific to tooltips. Maybe the disabled control registering a
>>>> special tooltip area on its parent or something like that.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 3. Do nothing and force users to workarounds like put the disabled
>>>> control into an enabled Pane and set the tooltip on the Pane. Sounds
>>>> horrible, especially for complex applications.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Thoughts? Ideas?
>>>>> 
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>> Pavel
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Sven Reimers
>>> 
>>> * Senior Expert Software Architect
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>> 
>

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