The purpose of this plugin is to allow the user to attach a leftward or rightward "pointer" to a coolTip (which one is used depends on the value of HPOS). The reason why one might want to do that is that if a page has a numerous graphic images clustered together that serve as triggers for a coolTip, this pointer will assist the reader in determining to which graphic it is to be associated.

Read the core module documentation for more information about ways to customize coolTip.

Remember that commands are always in uppercase (case-sensitive) and can have none or up to two parameter values.

To include this support module just include the following statements in the HEAD section of your document:

<SCRIPT TYPE="text/javascript" SRC="cCore.js"></SCRIPT>
<SCRIPT TYPE="text/javascript" SRC="cPointer.js"></SCRIPT>

You only have to make sure that the cExclusive.js module is loaded after the core module.

Download this module as a zip file.

NOTE: If the Hideform Plugin is used with the Pointer Plugin, then the Hideform Plugin must be loaded last.

The scheme used to achieve this effect is basically the same as that employed in the Shadow and Bubble plugins. A schematic of what is done is shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1. Schematic of the pointer plugin

As seen in the figure, two nested DIV containers are placed inside the coolTip container. One holds the image for the pointer and the other holds the popup content that is normally generated. These two nested DIV containers are placed next to one another, where in this case, the one holding the popup content is displaced to the right by the width of the pointer image. This image is scaled based on the height of the popup content, holding the aspect ratio fixed (height/width ratio).

Because this plugin uses the same scheme used by the Bubble plugin, the BUBBLE command is disabled when using this Pointer plugin. The Shadow plugin also uses this same scheme but it is not disabled except for Ns4x and Safari on the Macintosh, in which case it is turned off. This type of coolTip can be made STICKY and the NOCLOSE and/or MOUSEOFF commands can also be used. If they are, then the coolTip will close when the cursor is outside the "Popup Content Area" shown above. In other words, mousing into the "Image Div" will immediately close the coolTip (except for Ns4x) so extra care must be exercised to keep this from happening.

In addition, when this plugin is used, automatic positioning due to VAUTO/HAUTO is disabled (i.e., they are set to 0) since they are inconsistent with the purpose of this plugin.

USEPOINTER example

The purpose of this command is to signal that the coolTip should use a pointer with it. The default value is off (0). When used on the command line , it acts as both a toggle switch to change the state of this command to its opposite state and accepts an optional string parameter which is explained shortly. The type of pointer that is used depends on the current setting of cd_hpos. If it is RIGHT (the default) a leftward directed pointer is used; if it is LEFT, a rightward directed pointer is used. If it's value is CENTER, then no pointer at all is used. By default, these images are placed in an images subdirectory where the page using them is located. However, their location can be changed. This command will accept an optional string parameter value which is the path to the images, relative to the file they are called from. If nothing is specified, then the path is images/.
Variable: cd_usepointer