Comment 139 for bug 527458

The reason that many of us don't want to let this issue go is because all of the justifications to remove tooltips don't make up for the loss of functionality that can't be replaced.

Hover based tooltips are a powerful model that play a much needed role in a pointer based UI:

- they do not take input focus away from your current work as click operations do
- they do not invoke any pop-up windows that need to be managed or closed by the user
- they have no time limit and will stay open as long as the cursor is over the icon, even while you work in another window
- they are safe and are not overloaded with an action that also runs things (like click).

Hover adds a great deal of comfort for the user. Anything can be harmlessly examined without fear of making it do something. For new users this is especially important. Clicking on an icon to learn more about it will often run it, which is not what you want. Hover is the natural "what is this?" action.

Why not simply manage tooltips better? Move their information around according to the type of system. Pointer based systems could use tooltips while touch based systems could have long-press pop-ups or menu captions. Let the user decide when to disable them, move them, even theme them. They are essentially information / status objects. Let's be creative about what an information / status object can do, where they can show and then "show as a tooltip" is simply one of the options.

I think what is getting people worked up is that any software designer can see a number of solutions where we accomplish the "less is more" objective, address all tooltip concerns and encourage creativity without having to tell users who love tooltips to take a hike. As a result, the current decision is sort of a slap in the face.

I'm not saying that Canonical doesn't have the right to do what they want with their distribution, I'm just questioning if it is the right thing to do.

What is wrong with a win/win solution?