Mouseover

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What Does Mouseover Mean?

A mouseover is an event that occurs in a Graphical User Interface (GUI) when the mouse pointer is moved over an object on the screen such as an icon, a button, text box, or even the edge of a window. In some instances, the object responds to the mouseover by performing some kind of action or displays a tooltip containing a short description of the object.

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A mouseover is also known as a mouse hover or simply hover.

Techopedia Explains Mouseover

The response of an object to a mouseover event will depend on what the developer of the application specifies in the object’s corresponding event handler. To see how a link on this page responds to a mouseover event, move your mouse pointer over a link. In most cases, the underlying URL of the link will be displayed on the browser’s status bar.

It is important to note that the reaction of an object to a click event and a mouseover event are usually not the same. If you perform the two actions in rapid succession, you might fail to see how the object reacts to the mouseover event. For you to see an object’s reaction to a mouseover, you should hold the mouse pointer over the object for at least a second.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.