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This element is used for the tooltip popups. For text-only tooltips, this element doesn't need to be used; instead you may just add a tooltiptext attribute to an element.

More information is available in the XUL tutorial.

Attributes
crop, default, label, noautohide, onpopuphidden, onpopuphiding, onpopupshowing, onpopupshown, page, position
Properties
accessibleType, label, popupBoxObject, position, state
Methods
hidePopup, moveTo, openPopup, openPopupAtScreen, showPopup, sizeTo

Examples

Image:XUL_ref_tooltip.png
<tooltip id="moretip" orient="vertical" style="background-color: #33DD00;">
  <label value="Click here to see more information"/>
  <label value="Really!" style="color: red;"/>
</tooltip>

<vbox>
  <button label="Simple" tooltiptext="A simple popup"/>
  <button label="More" tooltip="moretip"/>
</vbox>

Attributes

crop
Type: one of the values below
If the label of the element is too big to fit in its given space, the text will be cropped on the side specified by the crop attribute. An ellipsis will be used in place of the cropped text. If the box direction is reversed, the cropping is reversed.
start
The text will be cropped on its left side in left-to-right text locales, and the right side in right-to-left locales.
end
The text will be cropped on its right side in left-to-right text locales, and the right side in right-to-left locales.
left
The text will be cropped on its left side.
right
The text will be cropped on its right side.
center
The text will be cropped in the middle, showing both the start and end of the text normally.
none
The text will be not be cropped using an ellipsis. However, the text will simply be cut off if it is too large. The side depends on the CSS text alignment.
Depending on the platform and theme being used, some elements will have set a maximum width so they will always appear cropped. If you wish to use the value none and the displayed text is larger than this maximum width, you may be able to use the max-width CSS property (or the maxwidth attribute) to override this size. For example, for a menuitem in a menu you can add the following CSS rule when you want to use the value none:
menupopup > menuitem, menupopup > menu { max-width: none; }
default
Type: boolean
If true, the tooltip is used as the default popup for displaying tooltips in the window.
label
Type: string
The label that will appear on the element. If this is left out, no text appears. For an editable menuitem element the value of this attribute is copied to the menulist.value property upon user selection of the menuitem.
noautohide
Type: boolean
If this attribute is set to false or omitted, the tooltip will automatically disappear after a few seconds. If this attribute is set to true, this will not happen and the tooltip will only hide when the user moves the mouse to another element.
onpopuphidden
Type: script code
This event is sent to a popup after it has been hidden.
This event may also be received while the popup is still open, but when sub-menus contained within this popup are hidden.

Example:

<menupopup id="top" onpopuphidden="console.log('The onpopuphidden method of id=top was called.');">
    <menuitem label="item 1"/>
    <menuitem label="item 2"/>
    <menu id="submenu1" label="submenu 1">
        <menupopup id="submenu1-popup">
            <menuitem label="submenu1 item 1"/>
            <menuitem label="submenu1 item 2"/>
        </menupopup>
    </menu>
    <menu id="submenu2" label="submenu 1">
        <menupopup id="submenu2-popup">
            <menuitem label="submenu2 item 1"/>
            <menuitem label="submenu2 item 2"/>
        </menupopup>
    </menu>
<menupopup/>
onpopuphiding
Type: script code
This event is sent to a popup when it is about to be hidden.
onpopupshowing
Type: script code
This event is sent to a popup just before it is opened. This handler is usually used to dynamically set the contents when the user requests to display it. Returning false from this event handler prevents the popup from appearing.
onpopupshown
Type: script code
This event is sent to a popup after it has been opened, much like the onload event is sent to a window when it is opened.
page
Type: boolean
Setting the page attribute to true will result in the tooltip being filled automatically as appropriate for a browser content area tooltip, i.e. the tooltip text is set according to the DOM element in the browser that the user hovered over.

Example

<tooltip id="pageTooltip" page="true"/>
<browser tooltip="pageTooltip"/>
 
position
Type: string
The position attribute determines where the popup appears relative to the element the user clicked to invoke the popup. This allows you to place the popup on one side of a button.  Note that a context menu will never respect this attribute, always appearing relative to the mouse cursor.

This value can be specified either as a single word offering pre-defined alignment positions, or as 2 words specifying exactly which part of the anchor and popup should be aligned.

If specified as 2 words, the value indicates which corner or edge of the anchor (the first word) is aligned which which corner of the popup (the second word).  The anchor value (ie, the first word) can be one of topleft, topright, bottomleft, bottomright, leftcenter, rightcenter, topcenter or bottomcenter.  The popup value (ie, the second word) can be one of topleft, topright, bottomleft or bottomright.

Positions specified as a single word string are shortcuts for the values above.  Valid single-word values are after_start, after_end, before_start, before_end, end_after, end_before, start_after, start_before, overlap, at_pointer or after_pointer.
For more details, including examples, please see popup positioning

Properties

accessibleType
Type: integer
A value indicating the type of accessibility object for the element.
label
Type: string
Gets and sets the value of the label attribute.
popupBoxObject
Type: nsIPopupBoxObject
This read-only property holds the nsIPopupBoxObject that implements the popup. You wouldn't normally need to use this property as all of its functions are available via the popup itself.
position
Type: string
Gets and sets the value of the position attribute.
state
Type: string
This read only property indicates whether the popup is open or not. Four values are possible:
  • closed: The popup is closed and not visible.
  • open: The popup is open and visible on screen.
  • showing: A request has been made to open the popup, but it has not yet been shown. This state will occur during the popupshowing event.
  • hiding: The popup is about to be hidden. This state will occur during the popuphiding event.

Methods

Inherited Methods
addEventListener(), appendChild(), blur, click, cloneNode(), compareDocumentPosition, dispatchEvent(), doCommand, focus, getAttribute(), getAttributeNode(), getAttributeNodeNS(), getAttributeNS(), getBoundingClientRect(), getClientRects(), getElementsByAttribute, getElementsByAttributeNS, getElementsByClassName(), getElementsByTagName(), getElementsByTagNameNS(), getFeature(), getUserData, hasAttribute(), hasAttributeNS(), hasAttributes(), hasChildNodes(), insertBefore(), isDefaultNamespace(), isEqualNode, isSameNode, isSupported(), lookupNamespaceURI, lookupPrefix, normalize(), querySelector(), querySelectorAll(), removeAttribute(), removeAttributeNode(), removeAttributeNS(), removeChild(), removeEventListener(), replaceChild(), setAttribute(), setAttributeNode(), setAttributeNodeNS(), setAttributeNS(), setUserData
hidePopup()
Return type: no return value
Closes the popup immediately.
moveTo( x, y )
Return type: no return value
Moves the popup to a new location defined by screen coordinates (and not client coordinates).
If both x and y have the value -1 the call will realign the popup with its anchor node.
openPopup( anchor , position , x , y , isContextMenu, attributesOverride, triggerEvent )
Return type: no return value

Opens the popup relative to a specified node at a specific location.

anchor
The popup may be either anchored to another node or opened freely. To anchor a popup to a node, supply an anchor node and set the position to a string indicating the manner in which the popup should be anchored. The anchor node does not need to be in the same document as the popup. Unanchored popups may be created by supplying null as the anchor node. The direction in which the popup is oriented depends on the direction of the anchor.
position
Possible values for position are: before_start, before_end, after_start, after_end, start_before, start_after, end_before, end_after, overlap, and after_pointer. Check Positioning of the Popup Guide for a precise description of the effect of the different values.
x, y
For an anchored popup, the x and y arguments may be used to offset the popup from its anchored position by some number, measured in CSS pixels. An unanchored popup appears at the position specified by x and y, relative to the viewport of the document containing the popup node. In this case, the position and attributesOverride arguments are ignored.
isContextMenu
The isContextMenu argument should be true for context menus and false for all other types of popups. It affects menu item highlighting; that is, while a context menu is open, menus opened earlier do not highlight or execute their items.
attributesOverride
If the attributesOverride argument is true, the position attribute on the popup node overrides the position value argument. If attributesOverride is false, the attribute is only used if the position argument is empty.
triggerEvent
The event that triggered the popup (such as a mouse click, if the user clicked something to open the popup).
openPopupAtScreen( x, y, isContextMenu )
Return type: no return value
Open the popup at a specific screen position specified by x and y. This position may be adjusted if it would cause the popup to be off of the screen. The x and y coordinates are measured in CSS pixels.
showPopup( element, x, y, popupType, anchor, align ) Deprecated since Gecko 1.9
Return type: no return value
Deprecated in favor of openPopup and openPopupAtScreen
Opens a popup element. There are two ways of specifying where the popup appears, either at a specific screen position, or relative to some element in the window. If either x or y are set to values, the popup will appear at the screen coordinate (x,y). If x and y are -1, the popup will be positioned relative to the element specified as the first argument. This is what you might do to show a popup below a button, for example. In this latter case, the anchor and align arguments may be used to further control where the popup appears relative to the element. The anchor argument corresponds to the popupanchor attribute on the element. The align argument corresponds to the popupalign attribute on the element. The anchor and align arguments are ignored if either x or y are not -1.
To have a popup appear relative to another element yet still offset by some number of pixels, determine the actual screen position of the element using the boxObject.screenX and boxObject.screenY properties of the element, and use those as the x and y arguments offset by the desired values.
The popupType should be one of the strings popup, context, or tooltip. Each type of popup is intended to be displayed only temporarily; they are not expected to be displayed permanently.
sizeTo( width, height )
Return type: no return value
Changes the current size of the popup to the new width and height.

TBD