Group windows into tabs

[A.E.M]

Hi,

When you have a VI with multiple subVI’s, you often have numerous windows open – maybe not during the development as you finish one subVI, close it, and then return to the main VI. But if you inherit a VI from a coworker and you’re trying to figure out what his code does, or when you’re in the support department as I, it would be a nice feature to group all your opened windows.

See my illustrations: The first one shows a mainVI where I have opened two subVI’s making it a total of 6 windows. The next one shows the same example but this time grouped into tabs. Of course one should still be able to quickly separate the tabs into windows.

One other feature could be to make an option named “Lock front panel to block diagram”, meaning that if you click a tab on the front panel, the tab on the block diagram automatically switch to the respective block diagram and vice versa. Again, this option should be easy to disable.

This idea differs from Jack's idea “LabVIEW IDE Overhaul”, because it does not merge the front panel and block diagram into one window – that part is still separated in this idea. Also, Jack’s IDE-change was presented to users in LabVIEW 8.0 Beta, which is about 7 years ago! I personally think that the LabVIEW users are ready to experience LabVIEW with tabs. I don’t think it’s a duplicate of Jack’s idea, but even if you guys think it is, my opinion is that it is time to give it one more try…?

[GuenterMueller]

Maybe I am too old-fashioned: I prefer the menu item "Window>>All Windows ..." or just the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+W. Works perfectly for me.

[A.E.M]

It is indeed a good solution, but I don't think it's the best one 🙂

[TiTou]

A very similar idea was declined.

[Mads]

Dynamic tabs are becoming fairly standard now in most web browsers so I think this deserves a new chance in the LabVIEW IDE as well, but there is a twist on it that I have not seen anyone else mention; namely to primarily offer it for diagrams, not front panels.

Front panels have their GUI roles to play, it is therefor less intuitive to present them in a tabbed interface.

Diagrams however do not really have a role in the GUI of the application, only in the IDE. So the diagrams could all belong to one window by default, with just an option to drag and drop them out of that window in case you want to view multiple diagrams at the same time. You might then also drag related diagrams onto eachother to collect them in one tabbed interface.

Personally I would love to have this available as fucntionality we could offer in the applications we *make* in LabVIEW first though. I've posted a description of that here.

[JCC_(SK)]

For me would be useful enough when subVI will be without Front Panels (you don't need FP on subVIs).

Idea: Sub VI without Front Panel

[AsianSensation]

I completely agree that this is a great idea.

Everyone I've talked to in my lab agrees with me, and I presented it to some NI faculty here at NI week and they said it was a great idea as well.  

I actually just ran into this post because I was going to post about this myself, glad someone else is on the same track.

People want this feature!

[A.E.M]

Hi AsianSensation.

I hope you enjoy your time at NI Week!

I'm glad to hear that you agree. You are more than welcome to spread the word about this topic at NI Week 🙂

[Darren]

Any idea that has received less than 4 kudos within 4 years after posting will be automatically declined.