 <ul> <li>Don't forget the <em>bootstrap-tooltip.js</em>, which is <a href="http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/javascript.html#popovers" rel="nofollow">required for popover</a>. </li> <li>Only add the <code>data-content</code> attributes to the <em>new</em> <code>&lt;li&gt;</code>. </li> <li>The selector for popover should be for the <code>&lt;li&gt;</code>s and remove parameter <code>options</code>, if you don't initialize it. </li> <li>I would move the icons into <code>&lt;i&gt;</code> like in the <a href="http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/base-css.html#icons" rel="nofollow">bootstrap description</a>. </li> <li>I've added some styling rules.</li> </ul> <p>The final html could be:</p> <pre><code>&lt;!DOCTYPE html&gt; &lt;html&gt; &lt;head&gt; &lt;link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/assets/css/bootstrap.css"&gt; &lt;style type='text/css'&gt; ul { list-style: none inside none; margin: 0; } li { display: inline; } &lt;/style&gt; &lt;script type='text/javascript' src='https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.2/jquery.min.js'&gt;&lt;/script&gt; &lt;script type='text/javascript' src="http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/assets/js/bootstrap-tooltip.js"&gt;&lt;/script&gt; &lt;script type='text/javascript' src="http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/assets/js/bootstrap-popover.js"&gt;&lt;/script&gt; &lt;script type='text/javascript'&gt; $(document).ready(function() { $('li').popover(); }); &lt;/script&gt; &lt;/head&gt; &lt;body&gt; &lt;h3&gt;category_name&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;i class="icon-minus"&gt;&lt;/i&gt; &lt;a href="newGenView.php?id=1"&gt;name1 - description1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li data-content="This item is new on Corkboard. Check it out!" data-original-title="New Item"&gt; &lt;i class="icon-star"&gt;&lt;/i&gt; &lt;a href="newGenView.php?id=2"&gt;name2 - description2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;/body&gt; &lt;/html&gt; </code></pre> <p>Also see <a href="http://jsfiddle.net/cFzeA/" rel="nofollow">this example</a>.</p>