Balloon help was a help system introduced by Apple Computer

Apple Computer

Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...

 in their 1991 release of System 7.0

System 7 (Macintosh)

System 7 is a single-user graphical user interface-based operating system for Macintosh computers. It was introduced on May 13, 1991 by Apple Computer. It succeeded System 6, and was the main Macintosh operating system until it was succeeded by Mac OS 8 in 1997...

. The name referred to the way the help text was displayed, in "balloons

Speech balloon

Speech balloons are a graphic convention used most commonly in comic books, comic strips and cartoons to allow words to be understood as representing the speech or thoughts of a given character in the comic...

", like those containing the words in a comic strip

Comic strip

A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....

. The name has since been used by many to refer to any sort of pop-up help text.

The problem

During the leadup to System 7, Apple studied the problem of getting help in depth. They identified a number of common questions, such as where am I? and how do I get to...?. In the context of computer use they identified two main types of questions users asked: what is this thing? and how do I accomplish...?. Existing help systems typically didn't provide useful information on either of these topics, and were often nothing more than the paper manual copied into an electronic form.

One of the particularly thorny problems was the what is this thing? question. In an interface that often included non-standard widgets or buttons labeled with an indecipherable icon, many functions required a trip to the manual to decipher. Users generally refused to do this, and ended up not using the full power of their applications since many of their functions were "hidden" by an unknown UI. It was this problem that Apple decided to attack, and after extensive testing, settled on Balloon Help as the solution.

Apple's solution for how do I accomplish...? was Apple Guide

Apple Guide

Apple Guide was Apple Computer's online help and documentation system, added to the Mac OS in System 7.5 and intended to work alongside Balloon Help. In addition to hypertext, indexing and searching of the text, Apple Guide also offered a system for teaching users how to accomplish tasks in an...

, which would be added to System 7.5 in 1994.

Mechanism

Balloon help was activated by choosing Show Balloon Help from System 7's new Help menu (labelled with a Balloon Help icon in System 7, the Apple Guide icon in System 7.5, and the word Help in Mac OS 8). While balloon help was on, moving the mouse over an item would display help for that item. Balloon help was deactivated by choosing Hide Balloon Help from the same menu.

The underlying system was based on a set of resources

Resource fork

The resource fork is a construct of the Mac OS operating system used to store structured data in a file, alongside unstructured data stored within the data fork. A resource fork stores information in a specific form, such as icons, the shapes of windows, definitions of menus and their contents, and...

 included in application software, holding text that would appear in the balloons. The balloon graphics were supplied by the operating system itself. As the balloons were implemented entirely as resources, they could be added easily using standard applications like ResEdit

ResEdit

ResEdit was a developer tool application for the Apple Macintosh, used to create and edit resources directly in the Mac's resource fork architecture. It was an alternative to tools such as REdit, and the resource compiler Rez. For the average user, ResEdit was generally easier to use, because it...

. Apple also supplied a custom editor application to simplify the process, which displayed a list of only those objects that required balloons, and edited the text inside a balloon shape to give the developer some idea of how the resulting balloon would be displayed.

The engine would automatically display the proper balloon based on the mouse location and the item's current state. It also positioned the balloon using an algorithm designed to keep it from covering the objects being examined. Help text for most common UI elements, such as the Close Box on a window, was built into the system. Developers could also include balloons for their application icon itself, allowing users to identify an unknown application in the Finder without launching it.

Developers were encouraged to not just name an object, but to describe its function and explain its state. For instance, for the Copy menu command Apple suggested the detailed "Copies the selected text onto the clipboard", as well as a second version that added "Not available now because there is no selection". This feature explained to users why a particular menu item was disabled.

Reactions

Balloon help was ill-received at the time it was implemented.http://books.google.com.au/books?id=1NfFvedzfggC&pg=PA467&lpg=PA467&dq=%22help+tag%22+balloon+help&source=bl&ots=vWPPzhHgnA&sig=-DcDLECjzAmQmlNgbRxe9xMlmTw&hl=en&ei=rxLmSaqkGMSHkAWkn6zhCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result It was slow on low-end machines, such as Macintosh Plus

Macintosh Plus

The Macintosh Plus computer was the third model in the Macintosh line, introduced on January 16, 1986, two years after the original Macintosh and a little more than a year after the Macintosh 512K, with a price tag of US$2599...

 and Macintosh SE

Macintosh SE

The Macintosh SE was a personal computer manufactured by Apple between March 1987 and October 1990. This computer marked a significant improvement on the Macintosh Plus design and was introduced by Apple at the same time as the Macintosh II....

. Balloons would appear immediately when the mouse was moved over any item with available help, meaning that balloons popped up and disappeared in a distracting fashion. Balloons could only be turned on and off from a menu, making it more work to use them to identify a single object. Additionally, balloon help captions for most application elements had to be provided by that application's developer, meaning that in some applications balloon help was only available for standard objects, such as the close box or menu bar.

No visible development was put into Balloon Help after its introduction in 1991, and it was removed in favor of a new "help tag" system with the release of Mac OS X

Mac OS X

Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...

 in 2001.

Legacy

Microsoft subsequently introduced the similar "tooltip

Tooltip

The tooltip or infotip is a common graphical user interface element. It is used in conjunction with a cursor, usually a mouse pointer. The user hovers the cursor over an item, without clicking it, and a tooltip may appear—a small "hover box" with information about the item being hovered...

s" in Windows 95

Windows 95

Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...

, which serve a similar purpose, but are generally smaller, and appear without being specifically turned on. A similar system called "help tags" was used in OpenStep

OpenStep

OpenStep was an object-oriented application programming interface specification for an object-oriented operating system that used a non-NeXTSTEP operating system as its core, principally developed by NeXT with Sun Microsystems. OPENSTEP was a specific implementation of the OpenStep API developed...

 and retained for Mac OS X

Mac OS X

Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...

.

The balloon help concept has since been adopted as an optional alternative to tooltips in later versions of Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

, such as Windows XP

Windows XP

Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...

, which uses balloons to highlight and explain aspects of various programs or operating system features (Balloons in msdn). Balloon help is also highly visible in the Squeak

Squeak

The Squeak programming language is a Smalltalk implementation. It is object-oriented, class-based and reflective.It was derived directly from Smalltalk-80 by a group at Apple Computer that included some of the original Smalltalk-80 developers...

 Smalltalk environment, in the Enlightenment

Enlightenment (window manager)

Enlightenment, also known simply as E, is a stacking window manager for the X Window System which can be used alone or in conjunction with a desktop environment such as GNOME or KDE...

 window manager, and in the AmigaOS

AmigaOS

AmigaOS is the default native operating system of the Amiga personal computer. It was developed first by Commodore International, and initially introduced in 1985 with the Amiga 1000...

's MUI

Magic User Interface

The Magic User Interface is an object-oriented system by Stefan Stuntz to generate and maintain graphical user interfaces. With the aid of a preferences program, the user of an application has the ability to customize the outfit according to personal taste....

.