How to have a simple text appearing when the cursor is hovering over a part of the document?

Question

I'm trying to get a short description of a picture to appear when the cursor is hovering over this picture in the pdf file. I read that this might be possible using fancytooltips but I have to say that after reading through the documentation and some "basic" example, I am not convinced. Could someone explain to me how to modify the following code to get "this is the description" appearing next to the cursor, when this one is above the picture (Is it the same process for another kind of element, ie. pop-up above a word or a paragraph)?

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[demo]{graphicx}

\begin{document}

\includegraphics[width=3cm,height=5cm]{example}

\end{document}

What are the options I have to customize this pop-up window (shape, background color, persistence, etc.) ?

Answer 1

You can use the \tooltip macro defined in https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/120005.

\tooltip{\includegraphics{example}}[green!20]{this is the description}

It works with all common drivers (pdflatex, latex->dvips->ps2pdf, xelatex, ...). Moreover, the pop-up is draggable.

The box background colour of the pop-up box as well as the text colour of the link can be set by optional args. Of course, since the link is an included graphic here, changing the link text colour has no effect.

NOTE: This solution requires to have an updated system (TeXLive-2013 or other) and to use AdobeReader. For sure it won't work with Evince reader.

Answer 2

While not as fancy as the tooltip in the answer from @AlexG, you can have contents appear on mouse over/click events using ocg-p:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[demo]{graphicx}
\usepackage{ocg-p}

\begin{document}

\toggleocgs[triggerocg=allactions]{1}{%
    \includegraphics[width=3cm,height=5cm]{example}%
}%
\begin{ocg}[listintoolbar=never,printocg=never,exportocg=never]{tooltip}{1}{0}
This is a tooltip
\end{ocg}

\end{document}