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by ccooffee 983 days ago
I used to put exact time/date information into tooltips, thinking "the users that need it can find it without overloading the UI". I ended up undoing a lot of that a few years later when user interviews demonstrated that hyperlink-style underlines was insufficient for users to think "mouse over this".

With the prevalence of emoji and higher resolution displays, I wonder if tooltip hinting with an obnoxious question-mark or magnifying-glass image would be sufficient to hint to older/less-savvy users.

4 comments

i'm "underdotting" anything that has a tooltip (simple css style). most buttons have a tooltip with a sentence explaining what it does/how it works. but this is in webapps that people use relatively intensively, so they can get used to this. it's better than desktop apps that often have no indication that hovering will show a tooltip.
Approximately two thirds of my time on the internet is spent without a mouse, so probably not.
You need to tooltip it without underlines... Maybe you did but couldn't tell from your comment.
Without underlines makes the data even more hidden. The style looks nice and clean to expert users, but I don't expect any of my less-savvy users to actually find it. (Though I could be very off-base as I've never A/B tested tooltip hinting.)
Dotted underlines are an old convention for "there's a tooltip here". Don't see it often anymore though.
Or... just render the date.
They did mention "without overloading the UI".