Peter Popov wrote:
> I don't know, isn't messing the status line considered bad taste? And
> how about those browsers that do not support javascript or the user
> has chosen to disable it?

Absolutely true. There are a small percentage of your visitors who
flat out won't be able to use javascript and some who just disable
it on purpose. Same goes for style sheets, so it isn't 100% portable
and if the information you are conveying in these "tips" is 
absolutely necessary to understanding the page, it would be better
to forego it and just make some other provision (like a comment in
parentheses, or perhaps a link to a separate glossary section). 
I'm just offering a suggestion for invoking some form of what the
original post asked about. 

As for bad taste... eh, that's a matter of opinion, IMHO. The only
serious arguement I heard in favor of avoiding use of the status
line was that it made it hard to see where the link pointed, which
can annoy people if they are looking down at the status line to see
where your link goes. But in this case, we don't want it to point 
anywhere anyway, and looking down at the status line out of reflex 
would just encourage your viewer to notice the tip your were trying 
to bring to his attention. Now, those scrolling marquee status line 
scripts... ARG! THAT is bad taste! <vbg>

> When navigating to an anchor, IE scrolls the page so that the anchor
> is on the topmost line. So it won't just loop you back to the current
> point. Can't one use an empty string for an href?

Well, that's true also. It isn't really the same point exactly, so 
I suppose this is a pretty questionable workaround, but, I'm not sure 
about using an empty href, either, since when I attempted this just 
now in Netscape, I found if there is a page "index.html" in the 
directory with your page, you'll jump there by default, if not, it 
tries to do a directory listing of your current directory (although 
online, my webserver blocked access to the actual directory contents, 
which is good from a security point of view), but either way, it 
didn't just give up and go nowhere, as one would expect.

I'm thinking if it's not a true link, giving up the "fake tooltip"
trick and having a separate glossary listing is the best bet 
afterall.


Charles

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