Core Swing Components - The Definitive Guide to Java Swing - page 83

Customizing a JToolTip Look and Feel
Each installable Swing look and feel provides a different JToolTip appearance and a set of
default UIResource value settings. Figure 4-5 shows the appearance of the JToolTip component
for the preinstalled set of look and feel types: Motif, Windows, and Ocean.

Motif Windows Ocean

Figure 4-5. JToolTip under different look and feel types

The available set of UIResource -related properties for a JToolTip is shown in Table 4-6.
For the JToolTip component, there are nine different properties.

Table 4-6. JToolTip UIResource Elements
Property String Object Type

ToolTip.background Color

ToolTip.backgroundInactive Color

ToolTip.border Border

ToolTip.borderInactive Color

ToolTip.font Font

ToolTip.foreground Color

ToolTip.foregroundInactive Color

ToolTip.hideAccelerator Boolean

ToolTipUI String

As noted earlier in this chapter, the JToolTip class supports the display of arbitrary HTML
content. This permits the display of multiple-column and multiple-row input.

ToolTipManager Class
Although the JToolTip is something of a passive object, in the sense that the JComponent creates
and shows the JToolTip on its own, there are many more configurable aspects of its usage.
However, these configurable aspects are the responsibility of the class that manages tooltips,
not the JToolTip itself. The class that manages tooltip usage is aptly named ToolTipManager .
With the Singleton design pattern, no constructor for ToolTipManager exists. Instead, you have
access to the current manager through the static sharedInstance() method of ToolTipManager .