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Apparently, the hover tooltip style that was already present for the follow button, has now been added to other places as well.

One thing that really bothers me about these tooltips, is that they pop up immediately, distracting me when for example I just want to press the upvote button and have 0 interest in reading that tooltip. It also covers up the top of the question body.

Usually, UX designers have added a delay on hover tooltips, so users that know what they are doing aren't confronted by tooltips all the time. This has been present on the first computer I bought, and is implemented in nearly every program or website I use that has hover tooltips.

However, for some reason, on SE, hover tooltips are immediate and thus always pop up when you're taking a specific action, no matter if you're familiar with that action.

Could SE add a delay to the tooltip appearing, ideally one that's similar to what everyone else is using?

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  • 5
    Even stranger that the other three buttons beside the edit button don't have this special "tooltip". The tooltip is starting to become the complete opposite of a tooltip: an annoying instant-popup that gives you information that is already stored in your brain (unless you're new here of course).
    – mindstormsboi
    Commented Jun 17, 2020 at 19:57
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    Determining the CSS path to an element that only exists when something is hovered is ... to put it mildly ... quite painful.
    – John Dvorak
    Commented Jun 17, 2020 at 19:59
  • OK, the tooltip is .s-popover__tooltip. And yes, I do think it's quite an ungood selector name, with both a dash and an underscore. And what's a popover?
    – John Dvorak
    Commented Jun 17, 2020 at 20:06
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    @JohnDvorak Actually, the tooltip always exists and is hidden/shown using JavaScript. ;) See the Popovers section of Stacks. But as far as I know, it doesn't currently have an interactive attribute for delaying the tooltip's appearance.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Jun 17, 2020 at 20:07
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    If I can target an element, I can always delay it ... indefinitely. And yes, I would have been content with a definite delay. Also, thanks for the link!
    – John Dvorak
    Commented Jun 17, 2020 at 20:09
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    "Usually, UX designers have added a delay on hover tooltips" Not "usually"; it's an inherent feature of the title HTML attribute in browsers.
    – TylerH
    Commented Jun 17, 2020 at 20:15
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    There is a Javascript library that specifically makes the hover even smarter, not showing at all if you crawl the cursor over the element it won't trigger, but if you stop it there, it will. It's called hoverIntent.js.
    – John Dvorak
    Commented Jun 17, 2020 at 20:19
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    @TylerH That's just limited to websites. UI elements in the browser itself (at least IE, Chrome, Firefox), Windows Explorer, Microsoft Office, most application frameworks and by extension many, many applications that use those, etc., have delayed tooltips. Thus it's expected that when using a computer, no matter what you're doing, if there are hover tooltips, they're slightly delayed.
    – Erik A
    Commented Jun 17, 2020 at 20:23
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    While I agree with this, it's unlikely that this will be changed as a result of this request. SE has taken a stance of "you'll get used to it later" when it comes to UI changes like these, and so requests to revert a UI change filed just after it's made will often be ignored. To increase the chances of this request succeeding, I'd suggest waiting a couple of months before filing it.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Jun 17, 2020 at 20:26
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    @SonictheStay-HomeHedgehog I don't necessarily want the change to be reverted, if they want to use the new tooltips, that's fine. I'm just asking for a slight delay, so I don't get to see them all the time. I was hoping that with the new commitment to responding to feature requests and listening to the community, that'd stand a chance, if the community agrees on average of course.
    – Erik A
    Commented Jun 17, 2020 at 20:31
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    MSO duplicate: Add a delay on new style tooltips. Linking (via comment) because I was looking for it earlier and this post was easier to find. Maybe somebody else needs to get there from here.
    – VLAZ
    Commented Jun 19, 2020 at 6:52
  • GitHub has a short delay (in the milliseconds) when you hover over issue links which I think is pretty non-intrusive. See github.com/StackExchange/Stacks/issues for an example. I think Wikipedia has a longer (and better IMO) delay when you hover over links in an article to get a preview. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Malvern_Hill for an example
    – Cave Johnson
    Commented Jul 1, 2020 at 19:09

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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We've added a 300ms delay on all tooltips. Thought about making it configurable per tooltip, but ultimately landed on consistency being more important.

Thanks for the request!

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  • Does that count for rollover tooltips in closed questions, Adam?
    – Ollie
    Commented Oct 1, 2020 at 21:55
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    @Ollie I'm not sure what you're referring to. Got an example handy?
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Oct 1, 2020 at 22:02
  • Here. When you pass your cursor through Glorfindel's discussion badge, it comes up too fast.
    – Ollie
    Commented Oct 1, 2020 at 22:04
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    @Ollie Wow, that is... certainly a style of tooltip, heh. To your question, no - only the tooltips provided by our design system are affected by this change. Over time, we'll be upgrading more of our tooltips (such as the one on closed questions) to those.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Oct 1, 2020 at 22:14

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