How to increase the hitbox of a elements on hover - html

Question

I want to hover over a text and display an image then. This works so far, but to be honest the "hitbox" is too small. The image is just getting shown when I actually hover over the text. I would be cool if one could make that hitbox taller. Is there any possible solution for this problem?
$(document).ready(function () {
$('span').hover(function(){
$(this).addClass('under_line');
$(this).prev().show();
},function(){
$(this).removeClass('under_line');
$(this).prev().hide();
});
});
.is_hidden{
display: none;
position: absolute;
}
.under_line{
text-decoration: underline;
}
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<img class="is_hidden" src="http://random-ize.com/lorem-ipsum-generators/lorem-ipsum/lorem-ipsum.jpg" style="z-index:9" width="200px"/>
<span><b>Lorem Ipsum</b></span>
I would love to have it like on this site. Have a look at these tables and then hover over an element like for example like Execute:
It feels so smooth and nice. I already looked with the developer tool into the css of this but couldn't find anything that helps me..

Answer 1

If I understand what you are trying to do correctly, you could try adding some padding and negative margin to your CSS like so:
span {
padding: 30px;
margin: -30px;
}
This will make the element 30px larger on each side, but the negative margin will allow the surrounding text to not be pushed away by the same 30px amount.

Answer 2

There are many ways and it is actually hard to tell what is the best solution without knowing the context, so heres a basic proposal:
span {
display: block;
padding: 10px;
}
You should ofcourse not style the span element in general, but this fits to your example. Better would be to wrap your text in an element and set the style there.
The padding will increase the "hitbox" / size of your element.
Better Solution:
js
$(document).ready(function () {
$('.hovering').hover(function(){
$(this).addClass('under_line');
$(this).prev().show();
},function(){
$(this).removeClass('under_line');
$(this).prev().hide();
});
});
css
.hovering {
padding: 10px;
}
html
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<img class="is_hidden" src="http://random-ize.com/lorem-ipsum-generators/lorem-ipsum/lorem-ipsum.jpg" style="z-index:9" width="200px"/>
<p class="hovering"><b>Lorem Ipsum</b></p>

Answer 3

You could achieve this using pure css. Put the image and text in a div and detect when the div is hovered over, then hide/show the image using the :hover selector.
HTML
<div id="hoverhere">
<img src="http://random-ize.com/lorem-ipsum-generators/lorem-ipsum/lorem-ipsum.jpg"/>
<p>
<b>Lorem Ipsum</b>
</p>
</div>
CSS
img{
width: 200px;
display: none;
position: absolute;
right: -200px;
top: -100px;
}
#hoverhere{
position: relative;
width: 100px;
margin-top: 100px;
}
#hoverhere:hover img{
display: block;
}
#hoverhere:hover p{
text-decoration: underline;
}
Fiddle
http://jsfiddle.net/L7L1bep6/1/
I updated my answer to mimic the site you linked more closely.