WoWhead Tooltips – an Improved System?

In another post on this site, Cataclysm and the Goblins, a commenter brought to my attention something to help with the WoWhead Tooltips thingie (WTT.) What the standard WTT does is pop up a tooltip when you hover over a WoWhead link. It’s powered by a javascript which you can place somewhere in your site/blog template (I suggest the footer area.) It’s easy, quick to install, and it works.

Unless WoWhead is down. 😉

The script tries to connect to WoWhead and If the WoWhead servers are having problems then your site will be slower to load. Apparently WoWhead has been having the occasional issue these days, as it gets ready for Cataclysm. It’s very slow as I write this post.

So the commenter, one Mentor, mentioned an improved WTT and posted instructions on his site, here: Install WOWHead Tooltips

It’s a little more complicated than the standard WTT install and you will have to create a MySQL database in your control panel. Once you have that, you run an install program, install a plugin, add some code to your header file, and you’re good to go. It completely replaces enhances the standard tooltip usage.

The problem is that I can’t really see the point to this device. Originally I thought it would replace the WTT, but then I removed the old WTT scripts and… I just get a link. Now, it’s quite likely that I’m a boob and can’t do code to save my life, but I don’t see any tooltips on his site, either. Not with FireFox or Explorer.

I’m putting the old WoWhead javascript back, but I’ll try it in the footer and see if that helps the pages to load better.

The tooltips wiki has complete documentation if you want to check it out:

• Documentation pages
• Features – including a list of all the platforms (not just wordpress) that you can install this thing on.

Here are some links copied straight from the examples on the Wiki pages, using the code in the example. They pop the tooltip since I replaced the WTT.

• item: [item]Rigormortis[/item]
• a heroic item: [item heroic]Rigormortis[/item]
• item: [item]titansteel shanker[/item]
• blue item:[item]Armor of the Fang[/item]
• green item: [item]Battle Seeker Chestguard[/item]
• Achievement: [achievement]call in the cavalry[/achievement]
• It’s supposed to call the WoWarmory, but I can’t get it to work with this character: [armory loc=”{us},{Bloodscalp}” ]Irillys[/armory]

Here are some links made the old way (HTML links:)

• Rigormortis
• Heroic Rigormortis
• Titansteel shanker
• Call in the Cavalry
• Character (no tooltip here.)

hmmm… Ok, the javascript is back in and the examples are a nice purple and they do the tooltips, but the old style links aren’t colored.

After all that:

Ok, I get it, i think. (Yes, I’m slow. Shut up. 😉 ) You get the tooltips with the original WoWhead javascript and you get the pretty colors and a few options with the new Tooltips thing. The old WTT will still do the tooltip, but without the pretty colors. I like colors.

You no longer don’t have to browse WoWhead for the item URL if you already know the name of the item, achievement, or whatever. Just plug it into the new syntax and the link happens. See the documentation pages for the syntax, copy the examples, play around with them a bit, and you’ll achieve enlightenment.

You have to have both codes for all the goodies and you have to use the new syntax to get the colors and added features, it won’t happen with the HTML links. Installing the new thing will do nothing to any old WoWhead links you may have. They are all safe.

It’s installed, and it seems to work now, so I’ll keep it.