CoolTip

Flexible and modern replacement for standard ToolTip for WinForms.

Usage

Place on the form and set BaseForm property. That makes relation for component, because Component doesn't receive parent reference during creation.

Set tip text for needed controls with their properties, like it could be done for standard ToolTip.

Tip text can starts with:

• ! (exclamation mark) for red warning tip;
• ? (question mark) for green explanation tip;
• i) (i and parentheses) for blue information tip. (marks will be cut from tip text).

Also you can set HelpText property for your controls and use Help Button of the window to provide extended help.

Extending

You can write your own visitors and managers to add tip support for own or third-party controls / components.

Visitors

Visitors used to inspect internal controls / components of complex parent, like ListView. IVisitor provide only one function GetItem to return any nested object by mouse coordinates (in absolute screen coordinates). Or you can create custom visitor in-place with AddVisitor function.

Managers

Managers used to extract additional information from target control / component to show it's tip, where IManager provides following functions:

• GetTip to get tip text;
• GetBounds to get the control / component bounds (needed to create proper tip window geometry);
• GetVisible to get visibility of the control / component.

Also could be created in-place with AddManager function.

Manual Tip

You can show tip manually with needed text for any specific control / component with Show function.

Credits

Originally was written by me for Delphi 7 in 2004-2007 years for own pet-projects. Source code you can find here. Of course it was adapted and a little bit redesigned 😊 More detailed history read in the article in my blog.

Debugging

Just open solution file and enjoy your modifications. To automatically register component for your VS designer you need to enable checkbox Automatically Populate Toolbox in the Windows Form Designer options.

Will be glad for any optimizations and/or proposals. Feel free to contact me :)

Features To Implement

• Chain validation, i.e. show warning tip if statement failed else check another validation..
• Add support for other built-in native Windows controls, like TreeView etc.
• Add possibility to change icons / icon background colors.
• Possibility to override tip window geometry and tip design (aka owner draw).
• Build-and-publish pipeline.