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Hacker News·4 min read·medium

Tooltips Need a Delay, and Then They Need to Skip It

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Tooltips Need a Delay, and Then They Need to Skip It
AI Summary

A developer shares a UX pattern for implementing tooltip delays that balances responsiveness with usability. By introducing a 'cooldown' period, the interface remains snappy when moving between adjacent elements while preventing accidental triggers.

Why it matters

This pattern addresses a common friction point in web design, improving accessibility and user experience for interactive interfaces.

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On the question listing pages for my product, FrontPrep , I display company logos next to the interview questions. When you hover over a logo, a tooltip shows the company name. One thing had been annoying me for a couple of days. If I just moved the cursor across the page, tooltips kept showing up instantly along the way. The cause was simple: I had set the tooltip delay to 0 , so it appeared the moment the cursor hovered over the logo. To fix this issue, I added a 200ms transition delay, which worked but created a new problem. If you look at the user interface, there are a couple of rows where multiple logos sit next to each other because the same interview questions are asked at multiple companies.

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