I love mouseover text

July 18, 2003 3:22 PM

I love mouseover text, especially in gratuitous, copious amounts. I've got that feature enabled where it looks all pretty (blue background, white text). But I can't read it all in this nicely-organized post, since part of the mouseover text ends up sitting underneath the 'ADVERTISEMENT(S).' I request satisfaction.
posted by evinrude to feature requests at 3:22 PM (51 comments total)

y2karl: stretching the limits of buttheaded posting techniques, from bad to worse.
posted by crunchland at 3:41 PM on July 18, 2003

On a separate but related issue, it appears that Mozilla 1.4 for Windows cuts off tooltips after 83 characters.
posted by hyperizer at 3:42 PM on July 18, 2003

Yeah, but hyperizer, who would ever put more than 83 characters?
posted by jonson at 3:43 PM on July 18, 2003

and here evinrude is being all polite and respectful. boy, is he gonna get an eyefull.
posted by quonsar at 3:46 PM on July 18, 2003

I'm using Mozilla 1.4 on XP, and the entire title attribute shows up and is not hidden by the advertisements.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 3:55 PM on July 18, 2003

Just to clarify, so y2karl doesn't think I'm picking on him just for the sake of picking on him and go all psycho on us, I suggest that any posting style that elicits as many comments on the WAY someone posts as it does to WHAT the post is about is self-defeating.
posted by crunchland at 3:58 PM on July 18, 2003

I can't wait for the small-type, italicized, pancake-themed, every-letter-a-link magnum opus.
posted by turbodog at 3:58 PM on July 18, 2003

Mozilla 1.2.1 on Mac also only renders 83 characters. I mean this not as a criticism, I'm just saying it.
posted by elwoodwiles at 3:59 PM on July 18, 2003

Clearly it's mozilla's fault. Good thing AOL laid all those guys off.
posted by christian at 4:05 PM on July 18, 2003

Using, um, good ol' IE on Win98. I can read all of it by cleverly resizing my window a few times -- but why should that be necessary? Regardless of whether the post's format was good or bad, shouldn't the post itself, even title attributes, take precedence over the ads?
posted by evinrude at 4:09 PM on July 18, 2003

Win98SE, IE6, - all is fine.

As is the post.

Build a bridge and get over it. I mean, every y2karl post? Sheesh.
posted by dash_slot- at 4:23 PM on July 18, 2003

WinXP, Moz 1.4, -all is not fine

The post is great.

Could you get over the novelty of the super long title tags? I mean every link? Sheesh.
posted by eyeballkid at 4:36 PM on July 18, 2003

In all fairness to y2karl, had he not used the <small><small> tags, his post would have taken up three-quarters of the front page, and he would probably have caught hell for that, instead. Damned if he did and damned if he didn't.
posted by crunchland at 5:04 PM on July 18, 2003

Your post does not work in Lynx. Please fix.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 5:22 PM on July 18, 2003

fwiw, Mozilla Firebird/0.6 truncates the long title tags. I have no complaints.
posted by crunchland at 5:24 PM on July 18, 2003

The post content and style is great.

Browser compatability is not y2karl's job.
posted by Argyle at 5:34 PM on July 18, 2003

Damned if he did and damned if he didn't.

crunchland - hence the "more inside" option.
posted by jonson at 5:45 PM on July 18, 2003

ie6/2k no problems here, although i found the extra small styling annoying, but that's just me.

re: the problems displaying the title tags: dhtml is not an exact science to put it mildly, which makes it a big pain in the ass for the minority user as well as the developer ,who in most cases has to resort to bloated hacks, trying their best to accommodate everyone. personally, i have rarely encountered problems with dhtml done right. then again, i'm running on xp/2000 ie.

if the dhtml hovers are that big of a problem, then just turn them off in your preferences.
posted by poopy at 6:01 PM on July 18, 2003

monju_bosatsu, perhaps you have "Show dhtml link titles" checked in your MeFi "Customize" page?

re: the problems displaying the title tags: dhtml is not an exact science to put it mildly

But the title attribute is vanilla HTML. If y2karl was using it correctly, Matt wouldn't have had to implement the optional DHTML hack. The title attribute was meant to be used for a brief title, rather than lengthy commentary. I wouldn't be surprised if some search engines mistake y2karl's unorthodox practice for keyword spamming.
posted by hyperizer at 6:59 PM on July 18, 2003

[more inside] is your friend, but then, I'm at 1600X1200 and Karl's post takes up very little space indeed on my screen, so I got me no problem with that.

The [small] text is not so great at that resolution, but hey, you can't have everything.

Also, the dhtml titles can be a bit wonky. I mostly ignore them, to be honest.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:12 PM on July 18, 2003

Well, even though I have the "Show dhtml link titles?" set to NO in my profile, after briefly trying it, I've never been able to go back to the way it used to be. And those dhtml titles are wonky, reappearing after I press the back button and not going away.

All so y2karl can get some attention.
posted by crunchland at 7:21 PM on July 18, 2003

Once again, for those who have problems reading y2karl's posts (as I do in several Macintosh browsers), please try my y2karlulator. This should be compatible with everything, even Lynx!

I don't know what the big deal is, anyway. There's never going to be a day when Grampa Stepleton tells his wide-eyed grandkids about the time when he could finally read y2karl title tags. Such a silly thing to be so vehement about.
posted by tss at 8:39 PM on July 18, 2003

Aaargh, but tss even with your y2karlulator the DHTML title goes away after a few seconds. With large verbose paragraphs it's awfully trying to digest any of it when you have to mouse-off and then on again every few moments to read the whole thing. I like all the info karl's cramming in there, but unfortunately I gave up on reading the DHTML stuff as soon I realized how wonky it was.
posted by dhoyt at 8:47 PM on July 18, 2003

"Wonky" and "not an exact science": check. Certainly if I were Matt, I would ignore this request. Fair enough.

I mean, it's just titles, after all. A whole lot of whining about nothing, that's what this is. Who started this thread, anyway?

Oh.
posted by evinrude at 9:22 PM on July 18, 2003

Look closely, though--all the data from the DHTML title has been extracted for you to see without mouseovers. That's the point of it! You can still mouseover if you want, but it's right there on the page, so why bother? Or am I missing something?
posted by tss at 9:26 PM on July 18, 2003

Sorry, I was thinking one thing and typed another. Without using the y2karlulator the DHTML layers disappear too soon, and using the y2karulator where the title info and plain text are grouped together seems to blur the chronlogy and gives the whole post a disjointed feel. (Sorry, I'm exhausted and doing a terrible job of explaining. In any case, the y2karlulator is pretty cool. Sorry to say I probably won't use it every time karl posts, though). In summary, I'm frustrated by the browser, not by anyone's posting style.
posted by dhoyt at 9:59 PM on July 18, 2003

i heart the y2karlulator. with dhtml off i never knew.
posted by dabitch at 11:52 AM on July 19, 2003

What I'm wondering about is why Matt turned off the big custom mouseover popups that he had a few months ago. They were pwetty.
posted by azazello at 2:29 PM on July 19, 2003

Some time last winter a y2karl title lingered across every website I went to for about six hours. I can't remember if it was in Chimera/Camino or IE for OS X, nevertheless it was very strange. Just sayin'.
posted by anathema at 8:36 PM on July 19, 2003

Personally, I think that Y2Karl's post is fantastic. Not too short, not too long, and full of juicy stuff. Plus, whenever I run my little finger thingy over it, something pops up!

What's not to like?
posted by bradth27 at 10:30 PM on July 19, 2003

What I'm wondering about is why Matt turned off the big custom mouseover popups that he had a few months ago. They were pwetty.

Go to Customize, and double-check that "Show dhtml link titles?" is checked "Yes". Otherwise, check your browser's DHTML settings.

I'm using Netscape 7.1, which if anything has even worse title tag pop-up support than 7.0x, and i can't tell you how badly I want these DHTML thingies everywhere I go.
posted by dhartung at 10:38 PM on July 19, 2003

Eh, Dan, I had 'em and hated 'em. I'm redoing the links soon to show the titles on archive pages, just for the people who're suffering under Netscape 7.x
posted by anildash at 11:02 PM on July 19, 2003

Browser compatability is not y2karl's job.

So then it's the job of each of us to use a browser that can accomodate y2karl's (ab-)using the title attribute for his (semi-)abbreviated essays?

If y2karl (or anyone) is posting for the benefit of other people here, then it should be fair, and even valuable, to point out if some of them (including me, in this case) can't read what he posts. What's more, that's something he should care about.
posted by mattpfeff at 9:50 AM on July 20, 2003

I agree, mattpfeff. We seem to be having another in a recurring set of debates on MeTa about y2karl's apparent inability to just post links that can be read by everyone without resorting to stylistic tricks that fail because they don't work consistently. Personally, I just skip y2karl's posts because the "Look at me, Ma!" posturing doesn't seem worth wading through to find out just what the hell it is s/he's trying to communicate. That the <TITLE> attribute is infamous for rendering oddly across browsers and platforms should be reason enough to avoid it, at the very least for any content that's germane to understanding the intent of the post. That's just basic communication design 101.
posted by JollyWanker at 10:22 AM on July 20, 2003

Go to Customize, and double-check that "Show dhtml link titles?" is checked "Yes"

ah, so that's where they went! Thanks, dhartung. Works for me now.
posted by azazello at 12:08 PM on July 20, 2003

And all you stuck on Netscape 7.x, go grab a copy of Firebird. Believe me, it is much more stable than any Netscape-branded Mozilla release, and is far better all around. (Well, except that you'll have to jump through some hoops to get flash working.)
posted by azazello at 12:13 PM on July 20, 2003

So now we are criticizing someone (again) for going to too much trouble in crafting his links? Tough crowd, huh?

Mozilla and its spawn do cut off the title tags, which can be a real pain, but the dhtml option fixes that nicely, for me at least.

Talking of multiple accounts (which we were somewhere), does the fact that Evinrude and Johnson are the same organisation ring any bells with anyone?
posted by dg at 3:53 PM on July 20, 2003

Except that the spelling is different, of course. *smacks self on head*
posted by dg at 4:08 PM on July 20, 2003

you'd think it would be clear that Evinrude is not a secret account alternate account for me by virtue of the fact that if you check his posting history, he's not a dick. But keep up the sleuthing, master detective!
posted by jonson at 7:52 PM on July 20, 2003

I thought he may be your alter-ego. You know, the Jekyl to your Hyde.
posted by dg at 8:05 PM on July 20, 2003

But keep up the sleuthing, master detective!

The game is afoot!
posted by j.edwards at 12:02 AM on July 21, 2003

dg: So now we are criticizing someone (again) for going to too much trouble in crafting his links? Tough crowd, huh?

I didn't say it wasn't a lot of work, I was simply suggesting that the efforts are misguided. y2karl doesn't go to enough trouble to ensure that the communication s/he intended to send is the communication all MetaFilter readers can receive. In a written venue, with no tone of voice, simplicity and clarity are what's needed most, not "hidden injokes" and unreadable comments. Lots of people seem to like them, and I'm just as happy skipping them, so in the end it doesn't really matter.
posted by JollyWanker at 10:08 AM on July 21, 2003

You're happy, they're happy and I'm happy--happy endings all around. Sweet.
posted by y2karl at 11:07 AM on July 21, 2003

Plus, whenever I run my little finger thingy over it, something pops up!

You said...
posted by Witty at 11:38 AM on July 21, 2003

You're happy, they're happy and I'm happy--happy endings all around. Sweet.

No, not so. You're evidently going to do what you like and ignore anyone for whom it devalues this site, but damned if your smug self-congratulation will go unremarked.
posted by mattpfeff at 11:06 AM on July 22, 2003

Ah, let it go unremarked. It's not really hurting anyone if y2karl posts a certain way, is it? I mean, it may be annoying to some, but it's appreciated by others... in the end, kind of a wash.
posted by jonson at 11:22 AM on July 22, 2003

I've been around long enough to know, mattpfeff, you won't make a dent in the smug self-importance of the likes of y2karl...
posted by JollyWanker at 5:06 PM on July 22, 2003

I wonder if y2karl will keep posting to this thread long after it scrolls off the page?
posted by crunchland at 9:29 PM on July 22, 2003

crunchland - more likely he will wait until August 18 at 3:21 and post one final rebuttal to satisfy his crippling lastworditis... Actually, I was just joking, but I can now seriously imagine him doing this. Of course, I can also imagine myself baiting him into doing this for my own amusement, which doesn't reflect all that well on me. I must remember not to poke the crazy with a stick.
posted by jonson at 11:23 PM on July 22, 2003

that's probably good advice, no matter how irresistable it might be.
posted by crunchland at 6:23 AM on July 23, 2003

Mind you, some one else may take the bait...

(",)
posted by dash_slot- at 11:15 AM on August 18, 2003