About Tooltips and Extended Tooltips for Commands

Tooltips are descriptive messages that are displayed near the cursor when it hovers over a toolbar or ribbon panel button.

The Description property associated with a command provides a simple description of the task that the command performs. Along with the description, a command tooltip also displays the values assigned to the Command Display Name and Tags properties of a command.

Additionally, a command can be assigned an extended tooltip that provides a more rich level of information about a command. The content for an extended tooltip comes from a XAML file, which can contain the content for multiple extended tooltips. Extended tooltip content can contain rich-text and images.

Control the Display of Tooltips

You can control the display of tooltips and when the extended tooltip content is displayed by changing options on the Display tab of the Options dialog box.

Example: XAML File for an Extended Tooltip

The XAML structure is a format that was developed by Microsoft. The following is an example of what an XAML file might look like for two extended tooltips.

<ResourceDictionary
 xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
 xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
 xmlns:src="clr-namespace:Autodesk.Windows;assembly=AdWindows">
 <src:RibbonToolTip x:Key="MYEH_CMD_0001">
 <src:RibbonToolTip.ExpandedContent>
 <StackPanel>
 <TextBlock Background="AntiqueWhite" TextAlignment="Center">
 Creates a rectangular revision cloud on the <Bold>REVISION</Bold> layer.
 </TextBlock>
 <Image Source="images/rectcloud.jpg" Width="Auto" Height="Auto">
 </Image>
 </StackPanel>
 </src:RibbonToolTip.ExpandedContent>
 </src:RibbonToolTip>
 <src:RibbonToolTip x:Key="MYEH_CMD_0002">
 <src:RibbonToolTip.ExpandedContent>
 <StackPanel>
 <TextBlock Background="Yellow" TextAlignment="Left">
 Creates a polygonal revision cloud on the
 <Run Text=" REVISION " Foreground="Red" FontStyle="Italic"/>
 layer.
 </TextBlock>
 <Image Source="images/rectcloud.jpg" Width="Auto" Height="Auto">
 </Image>
 </StackPanel>
 </src:RibbonToolTip.ExpandedContent>
 </src:RibbonToolTip>
</ResourceDictionary>

The ResourceDictionary element is used to define the type of content that is in the XAML file; while the scr:RibbonToolTip element is used to define each of the extended help topics in the file. In the previous example, there are two different extended tooltip topics; each is uniquely defined by the keys MYEH_CMD_0001 and MYEH_CMD_0002.

Note: Extended tooltips defined to work with AutoCAD 2009-based products need to be updated to work with the latest release. For information on converting an extended tooltip, see To Work with Tooltips and Extended Help.

The Stack Panel element groups the TextBlock and Image elements together. You can have as many TextBlock and Image elements under a StackPanel element that you need. The TextBlock element holds the text; the Image element holds an illustration that is part of the extended help. To learn more about XAML, visit Microsoft's web site and perform a search for XAML.