Hot tracking is the visual effect whereby the user interface elements (buttons on toolbars, commands on menus, nodes in trees, etc.) of controls in an application react to user interaction. In its most frequently used sense, it often refers to these objects on the screen lighting up (the "highlight" effect) with visible feedback when the user’s mouse rolls over their surface. The impression your users take away from your application when you have enabled hot tracking is more than merely cosmetic. A hot tracking application feels much more warmly responsive than an application without hot tracking, which in contrast strikes users as coldly mechanical.
With many of the visual controls in the Infragistics NetAdvantage, whatever platform you are using, it is easy to create a hot tracking user experience. All you must do is define the styling you want for the user interface elements in the control when they respond to mouse over (also called "hover") events from the user. This may be a set of style properties in a CSS class for an ASP.NET or JSF application, an Appearance object in a Windows Forms application, or even an animated Storyboard resource in WPF.
Not everyone has an art degree or the creative talent of a designer, but here are a few Do's and Don'ts that you can use when designing the hot tracking in your application that will get you started.
Do make your hot tracking effect different from other effects. There are several appearances you can give user interface elements such as buttons, menu commands, and grid columns. These include graying out and engraving the text or icons on disabled buttons, or painting frozen grid columns a different color from non-frozen (i.e., scrollable) grid columns. Users will learn the visual effect(s) you have associated with different user interface elements in different states, but for this learning to be most effective you must minimize any conflicts and contradictions in your styling. It would make it more difficult for users using your application if your highlighted button effect looked exactly like what they expected was the disabled button effect.
Don't convey information in a hover effect that is unavailable to users through any other means, because it makes your information inaccessible to users with impared vision. For example, if an icon indicating a "Low Fuel" condition was to only appear when the user moves their mouse over a fuel gauge, then the visually impaired or users not using a mouse would not be able to take action on this condition.