The simplest way to add tooltips to ICEFaces components:

As the first tag within the enclosing <h:form>, add
        <ace:tooltip id="tooltip" global="true" speechBubble="true"/>

For each component, add the attribute
        title="tooltip text"
Where, of course, "tooltip text" is the actual text you want displayed.


For <ace:menuItem> components, instead of title, use the attribute helpText.


The global attribute specifies that tooltips should be created for all elements that have a title or helpText attribute. The speechBubble attribute adds a directional indicator that seems useful to me. I assume this works similarly with other JSF libraries.


Styling for the tool tips is done via ui-tooltip. Example CSS:
        .ui-tooltip { font-size:12px; }


It looks like the RichFaces version may have more options, but more complexity. In fairness, I've
not dug deeply into RF, as I am implementing in IF.