Answering questions of the support forums usually means answering questions that have been asked many times before. But from time to time the answers change as members uncover tweaks, tips and workarounds that transforms answers that were once “you can’t do that on a WordPress.Com blog” to “here’s how to do it”.
Today was one of those days so I’m sharing some good news for WordPress.Com bloggers who want to text/image popup box that will appear appear when readers hover their muse/cursor over highlighted/linked text.
JavaScript has three kind of popup boxes: Alert box, Confirm box, and Prompt box but JavaScript is a security risk and that’s why the software strips JavaScript out of WordPress.Com blogs.
gabrielcavalli is setting up a WordPress.Com blog and he didn’t want to link text to another page. Instead he wanted a middle size/small text/image popup box to appear when readers hover over highlighted/linked text. He experimented and discovered that an empty link with a title will do it, as the title becomes a tooltip.
panaghiotisadam improved it this way:
<a style="cursor:help;" title="POPUP TEXT HERE">POSTED_TEXT_HERE</a>
So there you have it – a useful tooltip workaround from the WordPress.Com support forum.
Related post: Popup thickbox for images. The thickbox appearance is customizable but is available only with the CSS upgrade.
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- Your first stop: the WordPress.COM support pages (opposablethumbz.wordpress.com)
Susan Wright-Boucher
July 6, 2010
Great tip, timethief. Can’t wait to try it!
timethief
July 6, 2010
It’s so cool to be part of the wordpress.com community and benefit from other bloggers sharing tips on the forums, and in their blogs. I try to pass them along as quickly as I can. Best wishes to you Susan.
Zeenat{Positive Provocations}
July 7, 2010
Hi TT,
Such a wonderful tip! Will try it out for sure :)
By the way…I just got my internet connection today in my new home office….:) Missed you.
Hoping all is fine with you. Will be checking out what happened here on wordpress.com in my absence….wow….so much happens in a day na….imagine i was gone for a month :)
Lots of love,
Z~
timethief
July 7, 2010
@zeenat
It’s so terrific to hear from you. I have missed you and wondered how your move went. I’m so glad you dropped in and commented too. Not to worry about being away. We all need time to take care of our off-line business.
All my love,
TiTi
Cooking in Mexico
July 7, 2010
tt,
I have mixed feeling about using linked text, although I do use them from time to time. I am sometimes hesitant to do this because, while I like to provide more info on a topic, the link invites the readers to leave my site for another site, from which they may not return. What are your thoughts on this please?
I notice that when I my cursor hovers over a link on my blog, a pop-up box automatically opens without my doing anything to enable this feature. I like this.
Kathleen
timethief
July 7, 2010
I prefer to keep readers on my site. It’s a rich site filled with over 400 posts and I tend to be very detailed in my posts. I do link to authoritative posts in other blogs in the same niche on the same topics I blog about in my posts. I will not be providing pop-ups as many readers dislike them.
Cooking in Mexico
July 7, 2010
Dear timethief,
As I am still new to blogging, your opinions in this realm carry weight and help guide me, so what you say about pop-ups matters to me. (As well as your comments on outside links .)
1. I did not know that other readers dislike pop-ups.
2. I didn’t even know my blog had pop-ups until you posted about this, and I moved the cursor over links on my blog. They popped up!
3. How did this come about if I did not install this, and how do I stop it? I have used the WordPress search function, but all I can find is how to remove spyware pop-ups. I never installed the pop-up feature, so now don’t know how to get rid of it.
Thank you,
Kathleen
timethief
July 7, 2010
Kathleen,
There are different kinds of popups. The post above was not referring to mShots popups over links but if you are, then you can disable those here > Appearance > Extras remove the check mark from __Enable mShots site previews on this blog and then click “Update Extras”. Does that help or I am misreading what you are saying?
Ron
July 7, 2010
Hi TT,
Your new post, Followers Widget: No Thanks, seems to have vanished.
Ron.
timethief
July 7, 2010
@Ron
I almost panicked when I read this. I logged out of wordpress.com, cleared my browser cache and cookies, and then I surfed into my blog without logging in to wordpress.com. I could see the post and I clicked every category and tag link in it to be sure the post was appearing on the wordpress.com global tag pages and it was. So I logged back in to wordpress.com and my blog again. Maybe you are experiencing a browser issue.
Sandra Lee
July 7, 2010
TimeThief, I really appreciate your sharing of these tips that pop up on the wordpress forum, since I’m not able to read all the posts there myself. I’m curious to see how this feature works as the pop up boxes on some sites are annoying to me.
timethief
July 7, 2010
@Sandra,
I actually use a Firefox 3.6.6 browser with AdBlock Plus so I don’t experience popups at all.
Sah War
July 7, 2010
Greetings timethief,
Your blog is an awesome stop for insightful WordPress-related and general blogging articles and I’d also like to express my gratitude for sharing these precious thoughts (especially one-minute tips!) with us. You’re really helping accelerate the flow of relevant and innovative information around the blogosphere.
This very useful post is yet another proof of that.
Thank you!
timethief
July 7, 2010
Greetings Sah War,
I want to express my gratitude to you for paying me such a compliment.
You made my day. Thank you.
Panos
July 7, 2010
@tt: Thanks but I don’t deserve the credit. This isn’t some tweak of mine, it’s standard HTML/CSS, and I’ve learned it from devblog.
timethief
July 8, 2010
You’re welcome and keep sharing. :)
Cooking in Mexico
July 8, 2010
Dear timethief,
Yes, this does help and you did understand my question.
Thanks, as always. I feel like I can keep my head above water with the help and information you provide on your blog. What a great site this is!
Kathleen
timethief
July 8, 2010
Yay! I got something right. I did understand you. Thanks for the compliment Kathleen. I appreciate it. :)