Mouseover tooltips not firing up correctly

[Nahuel]

Binary package hint: compiz

I've noticed in Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) that all kinds of mouse-over tooltips are failing to popup correctly. Be it on the menu, windows list, notification area applet, hyperlink "title" attribute on a browser, etc.

Normally if you put your mouse pointer over something (that has a tooltip) and wait for a couple of seconds, the tooltip will show up. What I'm experiencing is that if you locate the mouse pointer over something and stop moving it right away, the tooltip won't show up until you move your mouse again. It's like if the mouseover event is detected after a couple of seconds of the pointer being still, but doesn't fire up until you move your mouse again at least 1 pixel.

If you go to System->Preferences->Appearance and disable all effects, then it begins to behave correctly. It will also begin to behave correctly if you just kill the compiz process.

I've experienced this problem in the two computers that I've tested, both of them with an intel video chipset (x3100 and x4500). I've been able to reproduce this issue with an already installed and up to date Ubuntu 10.10, as well as booting with the Live CD image.

[Klaus Reimer (kay)]

I can confirm the problem. I'm also using maverick and never noticed this problem with older Ubuntu releases.

Reproduction is quite easy: Open any software which has toolbar buttons (Like gedit), move the mouse pointer over one of the toolbar buttons (For example "Save"), wait a few seconds. Nothing happens. Now move the mouse cursor a little bit (One pixel is enough) and the tooltip suddenly appears. Sometimes I notice the same problem with popup menus. But I don't know if this is the same problem.

[Calin Crisan (ccrisan)]

I can also confirm the problem.

[pablomme (pablomme)]

Happens for me too, confirming.

[Lee Daniel Crocker (lee-piclab)]

Happens on my Laptop with nVidia drivers too, so it's not just an Intel thing.

[Sune Keller (sune-keller)]

I can confirm this using compiz, but not metacity, with the radeon and fglrx drivers (Ubuntu 10.10).

[jhfhlkjlj (fdsuufijjejejejej-deactivatedaccount)]

Hi, 10.10 is End-of-life. Is this reproducible on newer versions of compiz?

[ZombieRamen (zombieramen-deactivatedaccount)]

I can confirm that this bug is still present in Compiz 0.9.7.12 on Linux Mint 13 with MATE. This video demonstrates the problem on an old version of Ubuntu (not sure which, but that's not that relevant): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbObRdHfgME
Strangely, it isn't always necessary to move the mouse additionally to render a tooltip, but when it is, the borders around tooltips almost always disappear.

[ZombieRamen (zombieramen-deactivatedaccount)]

Running Compiz without window decoration (specifically, gtk-window-decorator) seems to eliminate this problem.

[jhfhlkjlj (fdsuufijjejejejej-deactivatedaccount)]

it would be most helpful if you could test an even newer version of Mint (14), which ships with a more hacked-on version of compiz. Thanks for the response.

[ZombieRamen (zombieramen-deactivatedaccount)]

Unfortunately, I'm unable to use Linux Mint 14 due to multiple issues, but I'd be happy to try a PPA for a newer version of Compiz if you could point me to one.

[jhfhlkjlj (fdsuufijjejejejej-deactivatedaccount)]

it would probably be best if you could download a daily image of Ubuntu 13.04, fire up the livecd, and then test your issues.