Prevent "title" attribute of parent element from causing a browser flyover

Answer 1

I don't think you can do what you want. It seems like a hack anyway -- child DOM element attributes aren't meant to "override" parent attributes. You should probably wrap the specific text with the correct title, such as this:

http://jsbin.com/ezipe

Answer 2

Why not assign the title to the question mark element (#qmark) instead of the containing div? So instead of:

<div title="this is the overlapping title">  
    <div id="qmark">?</div>
    <div id="hiddenContainer"></div>
</div>  

it would be

<div>
    <div id="qmark" title="this title no longer overlaps">?</div> 
    <div id="hiddenContainer"></div>
</div>

Answer 3

I ended up augmenting my existing code that opens/closes the "help" bubble so that it runs up the chain of parent elements and stashes the "title" code with the jQuery "data" facility. When the bubble closes, the titles are restored.