Will it ever be possible to have a little V-shaped pointer from a link to a popup, as for example in Wikipedia? See attached screenshot to show what I mean.
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One could even shade and angle the pointer using gradation and degree on the box.
Example from jseymour.net.
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Thanks for the nice idea, but I think you are using buttons rather than popups, aren’t you?
Yes, the example is a button overlaid on two boxes. However, it could easily be put in a popup.
See the quick example.
Thanks again, but it’s still not a text link, which is what I need.
Text links can only have an ‘on-click’ action applied. If you want a ‘hover’ action, you will have to insert a button with no styling into the text. You will then be able to have a popup open when hovering a mouse over the text (touch screen devices will need a tap to open the popup).
There is, however, one caveat - You would typically have the text wrap around your text button. Unfortunately, in sparkle using text wrap only appears to work on one side or the other of the button - not both sides. Therefore, you would have to ensure that your text button was placed at one end or the other of a line of text to avoid large white space on one side of the button.
Normal Sate
On Hover State
Maybe a future update may see the addition of an ‘on-hover’ function for text links. Until then, this is the only workaround I can think of.
Frank, if you set text and background of button to transparent and place it over a text which is to trigger a popup there is no problem. Of course the trigger text has to be formatted to look like a link.
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If you take a look at what I have created in this site you’ll notice that clicking a text link that I have a popup(s) appear. Sparkle doesn’t allow for active text link hover-over states on the desktop so it has to be a click event (the text link) to activate the popup and a click event to close the popup.
As all others have indicated, a button for now is the only element that allows for hover states as a trigger to open and close a popup.
Here is the website - Sparkle 5 [Goodies] - new features & functionality
Yes, a hover option would be nice too, but it was the shape of an on-click popup I was asking about.
Sorry - I misunderstood your question.
If you have Apple Pages installed on your system, you can create all manner of popup shapes. For example, open Pages and add a speech bubble shape to the canvas. Style the outline and fill, then right-click on the shape and copy it. In your Sparkle project, create a popup and paste your shape into it. Be sure to give the popup itself a transparent background, then position it near or over your trigger button. It should look something like this.
Obviously, you would also add a text box with your information into the popup also.
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I think this is the best solution for now…
The only issue I can see by placing a Button to look like a text link in amongst text in a Text Box is that some browsers don’t see line height and letter spacing exactly the same as macOS & iOS Safari. This is especially the case on mobile devices.
For me I wouldn’t go down this path and would just work with what I’ve got.
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