Remove Toolbar screentip delay timer?!

No feature request, as I imagine it is “just” a settings thing (if nothing else maybe doable via Window - RubyConsole if permanent).

The closest search result here was “Writing tooltip text to the screen”, solved by @DanRathbun (of course). Doesn’t fit my point here though:

Anyone also suffering from View - Toolbars - Options - Screentips timer (5 sec) too short?
It’s impossible to (re) read long tips from plugin and extension authors, thus of no benefit as of now.

While LayOut enables you to customize the toolbar appearance, down to “show hotkey on button” :slight_smile:

Anyone found a way for SU to at least increase screentip display time, if not to remove the display timer altogether, such that it remains displayed as long as the pointing device is not moved?

1 Like

I have checked both of the preference JSON files, and the registry settings but there does not appear to be any hidden setting, as far as I can tell.

The Windows edition of SketchUp uses MFC framework libraries. Looking at:

… we see …

Remarks

The default delay times are based on the double-click time. For the default double-click time of 500 ms, the initial, autopop, and reshow delay times are 500ms, 5000ms, and 100ms respectively. The following code fragment uses the GetDoubleClickTime function to determine the three delay times for any system.

This indicates to me that SketchUp itself does not override the user’s system mouse double click time. And, that the 3 tooltip delay settings (for SketchUp’s control window objects) are just inheriting the system settings, according to the formulas given on the linked page. (Ie, the autopop time is 10 times the mouse double click time.)

But applications can change these delay times for window objects that they create. (Everything in MFC is a window or subclass of it, so a tooltip is a kind of subordinate window object.)

If you know any C and Windows SDK programming it might be possible to send the SketchUp application a window message to change the delay time, and (hopefully) the child window objects (ie, the tooltips) will inherit it.

For now let’s move this to the Feature Request category, as a cross platform feature would be nice.

FYI, SketchUp and LayOut use different GUI library toolkits.

Very interesting, thank you very much Dan.
My duckduckgoing resulted in those windows specific “settings” as well, but a) I was/am unable to figure out what changes that would require/allow from the user’s end, and b) I didn’t realize from those search results what you say, that SU merely inherits the user’s system settings.

In some way it does depend on the software being used it seems: Example, right here on forum pages, in ff browser but also seamonkey, hovering on any “tooltip” enabled element does show the helpful text as many hours… as I don’t move the mouse away. Same in a lot of programs I am using.
So the 5sec limit does then get “overwritten” by all those softwares, just not by SU, you mean?

This is what confuses me.
Either way, if someone like you (well, you) says it isn’t possible to change, then I am served: It isn’t. :slight_smile:

Yes correct.

But I didn’t really say this. I said we know that the SketchUp Core Team can do it.

And I said it’s likely I (or Ken, or Thomas) could hack a window message using the Fiddle library, but this would work only for the Windows platform. I don’t have a Mac and so I don’t do any OSX hacking. :wink:

I actually do like this idea that the tooltip is persistent until the mouse moves. It gives the user explicit control.

I cannot read that fast most of the time and absorb the info.

Same here. In my case even, I am unable to do any hacking at all :wink:

So let’s wait for a future SU release that maybe makes this tiny improvement reality (or else wait longer until all authors program their extensions to show short, readable text only, ha)

Thanks again!