Unobtrusive and Slightly Accessible CSS Tool Tips on Semi Transparent CSS Menus

Phew, quite a mouthful of a title! Put simply this short project served three purposes:

To experiment with PNG transparencies in Mozilla and Opera browsers.
To create an unobtrusive script module for the creation of tool tips.
To make the script device-independent thus meeting WCAG x.x and providing the tool tip enhancement to a wider audience (i.e. mouse users and keyboard users).

Updates

Version 1.3, 31st March 2005, 20:45

Bind events using EventManager to control the release of DOM references and avoid memory leaks.
Custom CSS selectors for IE so the isNasty variable is no longer needed.
Various updates in global library dom_evt.js.

Version 1.2, 5th November 2004, 17:25

Locking mechanism to prevent clashing of mouse and keyboard events.
Binding the tooltip to mouse movement when the tooltip is visible within the boundary of the element.

Version 1.1, 3rd November 2004, 03:30

Events wrapped into a single object (twToolTipManager).
Correct positioning of tooltip for focus events.

Version 1.0, 11th July 2004, 05:13

First Release using event listener objects bound to the anchor elements.

To Do

Use capture to avoid retriggering the mouse events when cursor moves to nested elements (ie text).
Fix co-ordinate discrepancy/failure for keyboard focus between the different browsers.
Adjust the vertical position if the tooltip is going to display offscreen.

Version 1.3 tested in

Firefox 1.04 Mac, Mozilla 1.7.8 Mac
Safari 1.3
Shiira 0.9.5
Opera 8.01 Mac (UA tool tips occur with mouse events)
Firefox 1.04 Win
IE 6 Win

Version 1.3 partial support

The following browsers do not work correctly with the keyboard events, but are fine with mouse events.

OmniWeb 5.1
Opera 7.54 Win
Konqueror 3.4 (KDE)

Version 1.3 currently unsupported

iCab Beta 280
IE 5.2.3 Mac
Konqueror 3.1.4 XDarwin

Previous Versions

Previous versions were also tested successfully on Windows IE5.x but further tests will need to be done to verify compatibility with the updated code.