Comment 30 for bug 527458

I understand Mark's reasoning IF tooltips are only used to tell me what something is, which seems to be an assumption Mark is making. On an application's toolbar I might need a tooltip to tell me what various buttons do, but I don't need a tooltip to tell me what the volume control or rhythmbox icon are in the panel.

But I think what's missing is the fact that often these tooltips for panel items present additional information that would otherwise require clicking. Take Rhythmbox, for example. The tooltip can tell me what song is playing. Right now, if I'm working on something and want to quickly check what the current song is, I have to click on the Rhythmbox icon to pull down the menu which displays it, then click outside the menu to focus back on the application I was working in. With a tooltip, there is no clicking and the application I'm working in never loses focus.