Extension:TippingOver/Creating tooltips under default configuration

When using TippingOver with default settings, there are only two things that need to be done in order to create a tooltip and enable it for a wiki link. The first to add the target page, the page the link will navigate to, to a category that enables the tooltips. The second is to create the actual tooltip page.

Creating the tooltip page
By default, tooltips for a given page are set up on a /Tooltip subpage for that page, so the tooltip for Example would be Example/Tooltip. (See customizing tooltip page titles for instructions on how to set up a custom naming convention.) Note that the current version of TippingOver doesn't provide any styles for tooltips, not even an opaque background. There are a number of ways styles can be added.

Adding styles to each individual tooltip
One way is simply put the content of each tooltip in a div with the needed styles, like this example:

&lt;div style="background: #ffffff; border: 1px solid #999999;"> Tooltip content here... &lt;/div>

The drawback to this is that the styles have to be repeated for each tooltip, which is extremely inconvenient if it is decided to change them all later.

Using a template
A similar approach is to use a template. For example, one could build a simple Template:Tooltip like this: &lt;div style="background: #ffffff; border: 1px solid #999999;">

&lt;/div>

And then use it like so on actual tooltip pages: Tooltip content here...

Using a wiki stylesheet
Users with the appropriate rights, such as sysops and bureaucrats, can also style all tooltips on the wiki using wiki stylesheets such as MediaWiki:Common.css or MediaWiki:Vector.css (if using the Vector skin). An example would be adding the following to one of those pages:

.to_tooltip { background: #ffffff; border: 1px solid #999999; }

Important notes on caching
Due to the wiki cache, new tooltips often will not appear on links immediately even when everything is set up correctly. Often, resaving the page where the link appears will cause the links on that page to update immediately, though with category enabling option, it may be necessary to wait for that to update on its own. That often takes several minutes and can take even longer at times.

Displaying a "loading" tooltip
TippingOver does not load tooltip content for links when the page is loaded because that is likely to slow down page loads too much. It waits for the user to mouse over a link with a tooltip before requesting the tooltip content from the wiki, so there is usually a noticeable delay. It's possible to create a standard tooltip with a loading message that can be displayed immediately while the proper tooltip content for the link is being loaded.

By default, this is done by creating the loading tooltip on MediaWiki:To-loading-tooltip. (The appropriate page for this can be changed in the configuration). A simple example would be: &lt;div style="background: #ffffee; border: 1px solid #cccccc;"> $1

loading... &lt;/div>

$1 is a special token that is replaced with the title of the link's target page automatically. So when mousing over a link to Example, "Example" will appear automatically where the $1 is.

Using an animated graphic in a tooltip like this is a common practice as it signals that something is happening.

Displaying a standard tooltip when the tooltip page is missing
Normally, if a tooltip page is missing for the target page of a given link, that link simply won't have a tooltip at all. It is possible to create a "missing page" tooltip, however, that will display for any links to pages in the enabling category or its subcategories. By default, this is done by creating the tooltip at MediaWiki:To-missing-page-tooltip. A simple example might be:

&lt;div style="background: #ffeeee; border: 1px solid #ff0000;"> $1

This link's tooltip has not yet been written... &lt;/div>

This can be useful when all pages in Category:Has tooltips enabled or its subcategories should have a tooltip. Using this feature is likely undesirable without if the category filtering options are disabled, though, as that would mean virtually every link on the wiki would then get either its own tooltip or the missing page one. It is very unlikely to have a situation where it is appropriate for every link on a wiki to have a tooltip.