A delay setting for showing the front panel

[altenbach]

Many of my subIVs involve complicated computations and can take a long time to return. They are called with a "subVI Node setup" of "Show front panel when called&Close afterwards". The front panel often consists of a progress bar and maybe an interrupt button.

As computers become faster, or when the current math problem is small, the subVI just flashes for a few hundred milliseconds, too fast to really see much or interact. This is distracting and useless.

I propose a delay setting that would open the front panel only after e.g. one second (configurable) of subVI processing has elapsed AND the subVI is still not finished.

This will have the following effects:

• if the subVI completes quickly, the front panel is never shown.
• if the subVI takes long to complete, its panel is shown so we can see the progress and interrupt if needed.

Of course this could all be implemented in code, but I think a native option would be more useful. Here's how the new subVI node setup could look like.

[fabric]

Hmm... Potentially nice in principle, but there is also the likelihood that your VI will complete just a few ms after the delay elapses! It needs to be prophetic to really work properly...

[EricC.]

Good idea

Juste one suggestion

The real process for open a vi is

Run VI > Init HMI > Open Front panel > run > Close Front Panel > release ressource > Stop VI

With a delay, it is hard to adjust for all computer.

for me a better option is "Show front panel when acces to event struc & Close afterwards".

so we can make all initialisation computing and when the VI wait in an event struc for the first time the front panel is oppenend.

EricC

[AristosQueue (NI)]

Given that such dialogs are generally considered very poor UI these days, I doubt this idea gets very far. Apps that use this "pop up a separate modal window for a long operation" idea are being encouraged to rewrite using other UI techniques in every OS I know of.

I am not saying this is a bad idea for that use case... I am saying that I expect it would benefit few people today and fewer people in the future.

[Darren]

Any idea that has received less than 2 kudos within 2 years after posting will be automatically declined.