Balloon Help

The term Balloon Help comes from the computer. It is a bubble within a graphical user interface that appears when the user stays with the mouse pointer over a button for a certain time.

Developed Balloon Help of Apple Inc., introduced it with their system 7 1991. Upon activation, the Balloon Help offered an explanation to a run over with the mouse surface element. The declaration includes one to two sentences. This was for beginners who wanted to learn a program, although useful for day to day use but totally unsuitable, as the balloon took too much space. As a result, many users switched it off completely very quickly, which meant that some features have been forgotten.

Because of these serious disadvantages tooltips have been developed, the mending these disadvantages.

• Graphical User Interface
• Apple
• Technical Documentation