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I've recently run into a common and frustrating issue when working with the GUI: not knowing which types of objects actually support tooltips.

Like probably many other developers, I had the idea of adding tooltip to a domain element—to help end users better understand what those elements represent. But after configuring it and running some tests, I was disappointed to discover that tooltips simply don’t work on domain elements.

This isn't limited to domain elements either. There are several other object types where tooltips are silently ignored. 

What makes this more problematic is that:

  • There’s no documentation or indication of which elements do or don’t support tooltips.

  • The GUI allows you to configure tooltips for elements where they won’t be used by the GUI—so you only find out the hard way (trial and error).

  • This feels like a missed opportunity to improve usability.

Suggestions

  • Ideally, tooltips should work universally across all object types where it makes sense.

  • At the very least, the system should:

    • Indicate which elements support tooltips, and

    • Disable the configuration GUI for objects that don’t.

This would save developers time and help us build more user-friendly apps without the guesswork.

Would love to hear if others have run into this

Tooltips are configured in the SF on the translation object, which is connected to all kind of objects. Not all are relevant to attach tooltip texts for the UI too.

Currently the Universal GUI supports tooltips on:

  • Action/toolbar buttons and tiles of type: task/report/prefilter
  • Editors in:
    • general forms
    • task/report parameter popups
    • filter popup (value input)
    • import/mass-update wizard (value input)
  • Grid column headers

In terms of feature parity the Windows GUI supports more:

  • Detail tabs/tiles
  • Opened documents
  • Applications in the application switcher

The question is: what UI objects should we like to see the tooltips work on more? Feel free to post your ideas below. 

For example: Menu group/items or domain elements as Maarten mentioned already. Are there more?

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