Change the ToolTip InitialShowDelay Property Globally

Question

I have an application that has upwards of a hundred different ToolTips set on a Ribbon control. All of the ToolTips pop up rather quickly (about half a second), and I would like to increase the pop up delay. After some research it appears the only way to do this in WPF is through the ToolTipService.InitialShowDelay property.

My question is, do I have to go through the XAML and explicitly say

ToolTipService.InitialShowDelay="2000"

For every single control that has a ToolTip? Or is there some way to set this property globally, using something like a Style?

Thanks for any ideas.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, there's no easy way to do this. Ideally, you'd set ToolTipService.InitialShowDelay on FrameworkElement and let it propagate from there, but it turns out that doesn't seem to work.

Instead, you can set it on each type of control you want to set it on, for instance:

<Style TargetType="RibbonButton">
    <Setter Property="ToolTipService.InitialShowDelay" Value="2000"/>
</Style>
<Style TargetType="RibbonToggleButton">
    <Setter Property="ToolTipService.InitialShowDelay" Value="2000"/>
</Style>
<Style TargetType="RibbonDropDownButton">
    <Setter Property="ToolTipService.InitialShowDelay" Value="2000"/>
</Style>

etc.

Although this is a pretty verbose way of doing it, at least you only have to set it on each type of control and not every control itself - and if you're using it in the Ribbon, then there's only a handful of controls to begin with.

To save yourself some hassle should you ever want to change the value, you may want to architect the above code using a resource value:

<sys:Int32 x:Key="ToolTipInitialShowDelay">2000</sys:Int32>
<Style TargetType="RibbonButton">
    <Setter Property="ToolTipService.InitialShowDelay" 
            Value="{StaticResource ToolTipInitialShowDelay}"/>
</Style>
<Style TargetType="RibbonToggleButton">
    <Setter Property="ToolTipService.InitialShowDelay" 
            Value="{StaticResource ToolTipInitialShowDelay}"/>
</Style>
<Style TargetType="RibbonDropDownButton">
    <Setter Property="ToolTipService.InitialShowDelay" 
            Value="{StaticResource ToolTipInitialShowDelay}"/>
</Style>

Alternatively, if you are not already using BasedOn styles, you could shorten it to:

<Style x:Key="ToolTipDefaults">
    <Setter Property="ToolTipService.InitialShowDelay" Value="2000"/>
</Style>
<Style TargetType="RibbonButton" BasedOn="{StaticResource ToolTipDefaults}"/>
<Style TargetType="RibbonToggleButton" BasedOn="{StaticResource ToolTipDefaults}"/>
<Style TargetType="RibbonDropDownButton" BasedOn="{StaticResource ToolTipDefaults}"/>

The limitation to this approach being that a style can only be based on one parent style, so if you're already using this pattern, you won't be able to do this.

Answer 2

Hi there. I've run into the same problem and achieved an appreciable solution. Two of them, actually.

Both of them are based on DependencyProperty metadata system. For both of them you will need some pretty similar static-initialization code:

public static class ToolTipServiceHelper
{
    static ToolTipServiceHelper()
    {
        ToolTipService.InitialShowDelayProperty
            .OverrideMetadata(typeof(FrameworkElement), 
                              new FrameworkPropertyMetadata(...));
    }
}

What goes instead of "..."?

First solution is pretty obvious: place there the desired default value which will apply to the entire application except places where an actual value is provided.

The second solution is the tricky one: instead of "..." you provide default value from default metadata, but aside from that you change the options, actually you have to make the property inheritable.

new FrameworkPropertyMetadata(
    ToolTipService.InitialShowDelayProperty.DefaultMetadata.DefaultValue,
    FrameworkPropertyMetadataOptions.Inherits)

When the property is inheritable you can make things like this:

<Window xmlns="..."
        ...
        ToolTipService.InitialShowDelay="2000">
    ...
</Window>

That will do the trick for the entire window or any other element you apply the property to.

HTH