New Content Display Technology

[CamJM]

Does anyone know what the name of the new content popup display technology? It's similar to snap in that you can roll-over content and links and it gives information on it in a nicely executed graphical display.

I was reading about it on blogs like Techcrunch and have forgotten the name of the company and forgot to bookmark. If anyone knows it that would be awesome! Thanks

[JoeyDaly]

What you mean like keywords in a phrase and a tooltip that describes that keyword?

[CamJM]

Yes, except that they've stepped it up a few notches where popups are impressively smooth and contain rich content such as videos, images ect.

[Juparis]

All I can say is that it's hard to find what you're not even sure you're looking for. ;]

Anyway, it sounds like you could be talking about DHTML or AJAX Popups. Then again, there are services like Snap.com (http://www.snap.com/) that offer popup "previews" of other pages, but they're not really interactive.

Just for clarification (in case the above doesn't apply), are you talking about something like NewGrounds (http://www.newgrounds.com/)? By that I can only describe how all the movies/videos are opened in a popup above the content within the same window. I don't know what they're using, but hopefully it's close to what you're looking for.

[JoeyD]

If i'm understanding the question correctly, there are several ways to do this but almost always involve a hidden element displayed on one trigger or another.

A pure CSS solution is to nest a hidden (or display:none) span inside your hyperlink, and display it on hover. If you give a relative position to the anchor then you can pop-up the span wherever you want it.

You're probably limited as to what you can put in the span before you hit validation troubles, but images are no trouble.

[Seymour Clufley]

Can you link to any examples?

[eitsuop]

Are you perhaps thinking of a Javascript Pop-Over window?

http://www.obfuscated.org/2006/06/21/four-javascript-popover-techniques/

That link has four different links to Pop-Over window scripts. They each have different features and styles. I would recommend LightBox.

[JoeyD]

Sorry, i lost track of this thread, and i don't think i was answering OP anyhow.

This is approximately what i meant...

http://psacake.com/web/jl.asp

...i've used something of the sort for all kinds of pop-ups, tooltips, even navigation, like i said you can easily nest any normal inline elements in the span and place it anywhere on the page you want to.

But you lose it as soon as you mouse off the anchor.

To make a layer stick you need a bit of javascript, i'd recommend googling around because it can be anything from lightweight and free to 125k of Prototype ego-ware. Google for "javascript CSS popup" or "DHTML layers".

[CamJM]

Haha I finally found what I was looking for. Apture! I haven't set it up yet but looks very impressive based on the demo.

http://www.apture.com/

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/30/apture-gives-contextual-popups-a-good-name/