Best way to display a simple 'tooltip' in windows phone 8 app. (looking for UI ideas)

Question

I am looking for a few ideas on the best way to go about displaying a kind of 'tooltip' like a desktop app has when you click on a a text box, the basic idea is to give a more details description of what the textbox does. For example i was thinking about having a small question mark icon next to a textbox, tapping on the icon would open a popup message that would describe that particular item in more detail. Taping anywhere outside the popup would close it. I haven't done this yet but its feasible, but i am looking for more ideas before i commit to one route. I feel like my UI's are generally bland and i am trying to come up with a idea that will be more elegant. So my question is what would you do in a (simple) case like this. Code examples welcome, but ideas are great also.

thanks,

jesse

Answer 1

You would want to just attach the tooltip to the textbox.  sample code is here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/xaml/windows.ui.xaml.controls.tooltip.aspx

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Bret Bentzinger (MSFT) @awehellyeah

Answer 2

I read the details in the link and it mentions that tooltips wont work for a windows phone application unfortunately. I think they left tooltips in perhaps for porting or compatibility.

Answer 3

for some reason I missed this was a phone app.  :(   how much text are you talking about?  You can always initialize a textblock to have some greyed out text in it, and once they start typing that goes away.  That text can have the hint.  If you want a info or "?" display next to the UI Element you can always pop up a custom UI on touch.     I think it depends on the purpose.   But yes, there is no Tool Tip on phone as that was mainly for mouse over and there is no mouse on phone.

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Bret Bentzinger (MSFT) @awehellyeah