How can I use a carriage return in a HTML tooltip?

Question

I'm currently adding verbose tooltips to our site, and I'd like (without having to resort to a whizz-bang jQuery plugin, I know there are many!) to use carriage returns to format the tooltip.

To add the tip I'm using the title attribute. I've looked around the usual sites and using the basic template of:

<a title='Tool?Tip?On?New?Line'>link with tip</a>

I've tried replacing the ? with:

• <br />
• &013; / 

• \r\n
• Environment.NewLine (I'm using C#)

None of the above works. Is it possible?

Answer 1


 <----- This is the text needed to insert Carry Return.

Answer 2

Try character 10. It won't work in Firefox though. :(

The text is displayed (if at all) in a browser dependent manner. Small tooltips work on most browsers. Long tooltips and line breaking work in IE and Safari (use 
 or 
 for a new newline). Firefox and Opera do not support newlines. Firefox does not support long tooltips.

http://modp.com/wiki/htmltitletooltips

Update:

As of January 2015 Firefox does support using 
 to insert a line break in an HTML title attribute. See the snippet example below.

<a href="#" title="Line 1&#13;Line 2&#13;Line 3">Hover for multi-line title</a>

Answer 3

hack but works - (tested on chrome and mobile)

just add no break spaces   till it breaks - you might have to limit the tooltip size depending on the amount of content but for small text messages this works:

   etc

Tried everything above and this is the only thing that worked for me -

Answer 4

We had a requirement where we needed to test all of these, here is what I wish to share

document.getElementById("tooltip").setAttribute("title", "Tool\x0ATip\x0AOn\x0ANew\x0ALine")

<p title='Tool
Tip
On
New
Line'>Tooltip with <pre>
  new 
  line</pre> Works in all browsers</p>
<hr/>

<p title="Tool&#13;Tip&#13;On&#13;New&#13;Line">Tooltip with <code>&amp;#13;</code> Not works Firefox browsers</p>
<hr/>

<p title='Tool&#10;Tip&#10;On&#10;New&#10;Line'>Tooltip with <code>&amp;#10;</code> Works in some browsers</p>
<hr/>

<p title='Tool&#x0aTip&#x0aOn&#x0aNew&#x0aLine'>Tooltip with <code>&amp;#xD;</code> May work in some browsers</p>
<hr/>

<p id='tooltip'>Tooltip with <code>document.getElementById("tooltip").setAttribute("title", "Tool\x0ATip\x0AOn\x0ANew\x0ALine")</code> May work in some browsers</p>
<hr/>


<p title="List:
  • List item here
  • Another list item here
  • Aaaand another list item, lol">Tooltip with <code>• </code>Unordered list tooltip</p>
<hr/>


<p title='Tool\nTip\nOn\nNew\nLine'>Tooltip with <code>\n</code> May not work in modern browsers</p>
<hr/>

<p title='Tool\tTip\tOn\tNew\tLine'>Tooltip with <code>\t</code> May not work in modern browsers</p>
<hr/>

<p title='Tool&#013;Tip&#013;On&#013;New&#013;Line'>Tooltip with <code>&amp;#013;</code> Works in most browsers</p>
<hr/>

Fiddle

Answer 5

Just use this:

<a title='Tool&#x0aTip&#x0aOn&#x0aNew&#x0aLine'>link with tip</a>

You can add new line on title by using this &#x0a.

Answer 6

I don't believe it is. Firefox 2 trims long link titles anyway and they should really only be used to convey a small amount of help text. If you need more explanation text I would suggest that it belongs in a paragraph associated with the link. You could then add the tooltip javascript code to hide those paragraphs and show them as tooltips on hover. That's your best bet for getting it to work cross-browser IMO.