Which is better to display extra info on web page? Pop up when you click or when you hover?

Question

I like to display more info on certain keywords in a web page. I don't want to send the visitor to another page and I prefer to show the extra info on top of the current page.

The keywords are in an html list. It's basically a list of features and I want to offer more info about the features. So I have two ideas based on having 'More Info' or '?' hyperlinks.

1. The user hovers on the link and a popup window shows up with the info and goes away when they hover away.
2. They click on the link, a popup window with an 'X' shows up and they click on the X to close.

Which one offers a better friendlier user experience?

I like #1 because they don't have to click to open and click to close but the disadvantage is that windows might open inadvertently while they are mousing over the page.

Answer 1

Both are pretty annoying, but if I had to pick the lesser of two evils, I'd go with properly done mouseovers.

You can setup Javascript on the page to handle the accidental mouse over, and instead wait for a few seconds before displaying the popup window.

Answer 2

What would your users expect? Try not to break those expectations.

Maybe try a hallway usability study, grabbing a handful of users as they walk past the office, and just ask them to tell you what they would expect. :)

Asking Stack Overflow is a good idea too, but you won't get the advantage of context, which is very important with usability testing.

As a user myself, I find it annoying when I move a mouse and something pops up unexpectedly. Even with a javascript delay (which is better), I still think it's unexpected that something would pop up when I didn't explicitly click on it.

But, that might vary depending on the context of your application.

Answer 3

People don't expect a pop-up on hover - I'd definitely go with the click.

Edit / addition: think about the website you visit every day - text and pictures are (generally) static, and hovering, at most, changes the colour or add underline to a link, or displays a small menu of clickable links.

When clicking on a link, you expect something to happen - a redirect to another page, a pop-up box with information, a form being submitted, etc.

I'm not saying this is the best way to do things, but it is the way 99% of the web works, and asking users to deal with pop-up boxes on hovers or the like is a good way to turn them away. I know I personally don't read any pages with double-underlined links; it's a good indication that an accidental break in scrolling to read the content might end up with my mouse over a link with an advertisement tied to it.

Having a little graphic beside clickable text, or otherwise denoting that clicking will lead to more information is a great way of providing contextual information without frustrating people. For most of the world, pop-ups without clicking still == advertisements or spyware.

Edit / clarification: I don't mean a pop-up in the new window sense, just a lightbox-style javascript pop-up. Don't take the user away from the page, and give them a very visible button to click to close the pop-up. I guess what I'm saying is that people don't expect something to happen without clicking, especially not if it's going to take up more space on the screen.

Answer 4

Personally, I'd go with the click option. There's a standard Way Things Work on the web which says that hovers are for information about the link itself and what action clicking on it will do ("See more comments", "Click for help", etc.), whereas clicking is what actually performs the action.

If you do decide to go with the hover option, make sure that you code it such that users can select the text in the popup. It's really annoying when you just want to copy some useful information somewhere and the GUI hides it before you can reach it.

Answer 5

Adding to what the others have said, I would also prefer the click option.

The problem I have with the hover option is that, and maybe this is just me, if the hoverable area is on the small side, I have a hard time keeping my mouse still enough to keep hovering. The cursor tends to move off the link in the middle of reading and my nice help text disappears.

Answer 6

As a couple of additional precedents to consider, you might want to consider the functionality of the acronym and abbr HTML tags. Both allow you to provide extra information on a particular piece of text in the page, and both work on the "hover" principle.

Answer 7

Points to ponder:

• If items are so dense that everywhere you move the mouse something pops up on hover then do NOT do hover!
• Can you make hover show very brief info, and have click show more detail? This may be the best of both worlds if it works for you.
• Can you have a dedicated box that displays info when you hover? This may be better than any pop-up. Opinions vary...

In the end it's what works for your app, from your users' point of view.