Need help text of more than 255 characters

Question

I need to use helptext with one custom field in Visualforce but Salesforce it allows 255 characters in helptext with a field. One solution is to create an image of text and show that image onMouseOver. Can you suggest me other solutions?

Answer 1

Use <apex:pageBlockSectionItem>, it has a helptext attribute that corresponds to the balloon. You can put your "long help" in a custom label for example so it can be translated to other languages like standard help texts.

<apex:pageBlockSectionItem helpText="Lorem ipsum ... (400+ chars)">
    <apex:outputLabel value="{!$ObjectType.Opportunity.fields.CurrencyIsoCode.Label}" />
    <apex:outputField value="{!Opportunity.CurrencyIsoCode}" />
</apex:pageBlockSectionItem>

Answer 2

If you are competent in JavaScript and using JavaScript libraries,
use <apex:inputText title="LongHelpTextGoesHere" />
in your Visualforce page with either of the following:

1. http://jquerytools.org/demos/tooltip/form.html
2. http://jqueryui.com/tooltip/