Java Swing, 2nd Edition

Tooltips

You have probably already seen several examples of using basic tooltips with components such as JButton and JLabel. The following classes give you access to much more of the tooltip system in case you need to develop something beyond simple text tips.

The ToolTipManager Class

This class manages the tooltips for an application. Following the singleton pattern, any given virtual machine will have, at most, one ToolTipManager at any time—a new instance is created when the class is loaded. (Of course, you’re already familiar with Design Patterns by Gamma et al., right?) You can retrieve the current manager using the ToolTipManager.sharedInstance( ) method.

Properties

The ToolTipManager properties shown in Table 27-3 give you control over the delays (in milliseconds) involved in showing tooltips and determines whether or not tooltips are even active. The enabled property determines whether or not tooltips are active. The dismissDelay property determines how long a tooltip remains on the screen if you don’t do something to dismiss it manually (such as move the mouse outside the component’s borders). The initialDelay property determines how long the mouse must rest inside a component before the tooltip pops up, and reshowDelay determines how long you must wait after leaving a component before the same tooltip shows up again when you reenter the component. (These properties are used by a timer whose delays are triggered by mouse events.) If the lightWeightPopupEnabled property ...