Add Hover display for table cell

Question

I have a table, but it is not in a list format, meaning not a column/row format. I look for specific cells to add a hover event that displays a description of the cell.

$("#TableID td").hover(function(){
//ifCellThatIWant
   $(this).append("<span>Message that was brought in</span>");
   },
   function(){
    $(this).children().remove();
    });

The problem is right now is that the hover displays a span(with info. inside) that I used jquery to append the span to the cell when mouseover, which expands the cell, which is an effect that I don't like or want. I'm Trying to have an out of the table look,but still be by the cell that triggered the event; because if the span has a lot of info. in it, expanding the cell dynamically will start to look pretty nasty. Also will help if I had some type of css direction on how will I make the display for the mouseover "description" span look nice. My mind thought is that a way to accomplish what I want is giver the appended span the position of my mouse cursor when hover, but not sure if its the right approach or what the syntax would look like.

Answer 1

Make the span display as block and set the z-index greater than anything else on the page. Then you can absolute position it and set the left and top properties to the x and y positions of the mouse location.

EDIT:

Here's a demo of what I mean --> http://jsbin.com/odape. Instead of appending a span, I would suggest just creating a placeholder one at the bottom of your html to use for each cell and just change the text to display (not sure how you were bringing it in so I didn't add it in my example.