Bug 114304 – Provide a way to prevent tooltip containing the full text over truncated text

• Status: UNCONFIRMED
• Component: WebCore Misc.

[Daniel Trebbien]

Bug 66178 added an option to automatically show tooltips (with the full text) over text that is truncated via text-overflow:ellipsis.  This option seems to have been recently enabled by default in Safari 6 and WebKit nightly (r147999 built on 09 April 2013 tested), but not in Chrome 26.0.1410.63 or Chrome 28.0.1469.0 canary.

An app that I am writing displays its own tooltip containing the full text if truncated.  So, in Safari 6 and WebKit nightly, I get two tooltips containing the full text.  This "two tooltip" issue has been mentioned on www-style recently as well:  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2013Apr/0013.html

Please provide an option to disable this tooltip so that I can use my JavaScript tooltip solution rather than WebKit's native tooltip, which in many cases is not as good as the JavaScript tooltip because the WebKit tooltip cannot be customized.

If the setting is on by default then that’s a bug.

[Daniel Trebbien]

The following command:

    defaults read /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Resources/Defaults.plist WebKitShowsToolTipOverTruncatedText

shows that the default is TRUE (Safari 6.0.3, Mac OS 10.7.5).

[Daniel Trebbien]

I found that changing the value of the WebKitShowsToolTipOverTruncatedText key to FALSE does not disable the tooltip.  Instead, if I change the value of the com.apple.Safari.ContentPageGroupIdentifier.WebKit2ShowsToolTipOverTruncatedText key from TRUE (the default) to FALSE, then the native tooltip is disabled.

(In reply to comment #2)
> The following command:
> 
>     defaults read /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Resources/Defaults.plist WebKitShowsToolTipOverTruncatedText
> 
> shows that the default is TRUE (Safari 6.0.3, Mac OS 10.7.5).

I see. These are Safari defaults, not WebKit’s. WebKit defaults (in both WebKit1 and WebKit2) to having this feature turned off.

Just to clarify, by “JavaScript tooltip”, do you mean a DOM element styled to look like a tooltip or a native tooltip somehow triggered by JavaScript (how?)?

[Daniel Trebbien]

(In reply to comment #5)
> Just to clarify, by “JavaScript tooltip”, do you mean a DOM element styled to look like a tooltip or a native tooltip somehow triggered by JavaScript (how?)?

I mean a DOM element styled to look like a tooltip.

[Philip Walton]

I experienced this problem as well and sent a note to the www-style list to clarify the desired result in the spec. As far as I can tell, Webkit nightly and Safari 6 are the only browsers that show a tooltip for `overflow:ellipsis`.

Anthony Ticknor put together this test case for me, perhaps it will be helpful:
http://jsfiddle.net/apticknor/kc444/

On 2013-04-09 this was confirmed as a bug by [e-mail]
Will this be getting fixed? It looks like it may have slipped through the cracks.

[Alexey Proskuryakov]

*** Bug 238808 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Woody Lee]

Any progress with it?
We want to use a customized-style tooltip instead of the native one.

You can cover the original text with a transparent element to prevent the original tooltip from appearing. If left position of the custom tooltip match to the left of the text, just use part of the popup itself (make it transparent).