LabVIEW 8.6

[Dave_Thomson]

I haven't used Quick Drop enough to know whether I like it much or not, but I have noticed that I all-too-often hit the Quick Drop shortcut key by mistake, then end up waiting nearly an eternity (probably more than 10 seconds) for it to populate before I can go back to coding.  Is there any chance this could slowly self-populate in the background after LabVIEW has started, using spare CPU cycles?

This next one may seem minor, but I just have to wonder who decides to change little things like this.  In previous versions of LV, if you started wiring something and changed your mind, you could double-click on the beginning wiring point and the wire would disappear.  (If you hadnt' already tacked it down somewhere.)  In 8.6, this is gone.  You can get the same effect in any version with the Escape key, but everyone knows how annoying it is to change needlessly from the mouse to the keyboard.  Could this qualify as a bug?  Or is it some developer's attempt at cleaning things up?

[Darren]

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Dave Thomson wrote:

I haven't used Quick Drop enough to know whether I like it much or not, but I have noticed that I all-too-often hit the Quick Drop shortcut key by mistake, then end up waiting nearly an eternity (probably more than 10 seconds) for it to populate before I can go back to coding.  Is there any chance this could slowly self-populate in the background after LabVIEW has started, using spare CPU cycles?

This next one may seem minor, but I just have to wonder who decides to change little things like this.  In previous versions of LV, if you started wiring something and changed your mind, you could double-click on the beginning wiring point and the wire would disappear.  (If you hadnt' already tacked it down somewhere.)  In 8.6, this is gone.  You can get the same effect in any version with the Escape key, but everyone knows how annoying it is to change needlessly from the mouse to the keyboard.  Could this qualify as a bug?  Or is it some developer's attempt at cleaning things up?

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Quick Drop is really just a different front end for accessing palette objects...if you have "Load Palettes in Background" selected in Tools > Options > Controls/Functions Palettes, it should be doing exactly what you request...populating palette information in the background.  So it's either not done loading the palette information when you bring up Quick Drop, or there's some palette stuff we just couldn't load in the background for some reason.

Either way, if you decide you want to start using Quick Drop more frequently, I recommend you read my latest Darren's Weekly Nugget, where I give some advanced Quick Drop tips, including how to make your first Quick Drop launch instantly usable (at the expense of a slightly longer launch time).

And if you decide you don't like Quick Drop, you can always change the key combination to something less accidental at Tools > Options > Keyboard Shortcuts.

-D

P.S. - I don't know what's up with the wire double-clicking thing...if the behavior is there in 8.5, but gone in 8.6, that's probably worth a bug report.  I recommend posting a new thread specifically on this issue in the LabVIEW forum so the AEs can create a CAR if y'all end up determining it's a bug.

[Dave_Thomson]

Darren,

    Thanks for the explanations.  I do have "Load in the Background" checked. It must be, as you say, that something is unable to load on its own.  It makes sense that this is just another manifestation of the pallette loading, because I get the same behaviour when I'm in the pallettes and accidentally hit the Help button.  LabVIEW goes out to lunch for a LONGGG time until the help appears and I can continue programming.  As far as I know, I've always had Load in the Background on, but always had the problem.  Some installations have various toolkits and addons, some don't.  There may be a correlation there that I haven't noticed.

   I'll post the wiring thing to a new thread.

Cheers,

   DaveT