Title: I can't see you.

November 10, 2007 6:41 PM

Why won't firefox display titles on hover (except inside Google Reader)?

I noticed a while ago that I wasn't seeing title attributes on hover. When I added xkcd to my google reader feed, I found that comics viewed within Reader showed the title on hover, but viewing them on their own page doesn't. Today I went through and disabled all my extensions, and I'm still getting the same behaviour. What have I done?

posted by jacalata to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

I have this same issue. I thought it was in the javascript allowance settings (in options), but I toggled things off and on and couldn't get it to work. I have a suspect that it's in there somewhere - some permission, or perhaps in about:config.
posted by cashman at 6:43 PM on November 10, 2007

Response by poster: But titles on hover aren't anything to do with javascript, they're a html attribute.
posted by jacalata at 6:46 PM on November 10, 2007

I think it's something about titles not being supposed to display on hover, technically. Mozilla, being all standards-friendly, doesn't have this feature/bug, unlike IE. I use the Popup ALT attribute extension to get around this. It's a little wonky sometimes but it does the job.
posted by MadamM at 6:51 PM on November 10, 2007

Response by poster: That's for the Alt attribute, which is meant to show if the image itself doesn't. The Title attribute is meant to display on hover, and is supported natively by firefox.
posted by jacalata at 7:02 PM on November 10, 2007

Best answer: Go to about:config and type toolbar_tips. The attribute browser.chrome.toolbar_tips should be set to true. If it does not exist, create it as a boolean and set it to true.

If it does exist, and is true, then something else is going on. Try creating a new profile using the profile manager and see if it behaves the same way.
posted by dhartung at 10:14 PM on November 10, 2007

Response by poster: Thanks, that fixed it! I guess it was changed by an extension and didn't change back when I removed them.
posted by jacalata at 11:06 PM on November 10, 2007

Thank you jacalata and dhartung. Worked for me too.
posted by cashman at 6:56 AM on November 11, 2007

BTW, the reason you might have added an extension for this is that Firefox cuts off the longer xkcd titles, and there is an extension to show the whole thing. I assume it would turn off this setting.
posted by smackfu at 10:47 AM on November 13, 2007