Allow access to menus on the menu bar without re-sizing the front panel window

[K_Joy]

Sometimes you want your front panel fixed to a particular size. Sometimes you also want to access the “Tools,” “Window,” or “Help” menus.

When you have intentionally re-sized your front panel to a specific (small) size, it’s a pain to have to resize the window or switch to a different window every time you want to access something under “Tools” or any of the other menus that are not visible. 

(Sure, I could switch to the block diagram and get to the menus from there. But if I can’t remember the keyboard shortcut to open the block diagram, I have to resize the window to get to the “Window” menu to open the block diagram.)

For example, when you make an XControl, you want to re-size the facade to fit the controls that you put on it. And then you want to keep it at that size. On the built-in Simple Dual-Mode Thermometer example, you can’t see any of the menus past “Edit” on the Facade without re-sizing the XControl.

It would be nice if an arrow or something appeared on the menu bar when the window is sized too small that I could then click on and expand to get to the menus that are not visible.

[altenbach]

here is a better solution.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

I would also like this fixed. In the meantime, the workaround that I use is to tap the "Alt" key and then use the arrow keys to move through the menus.

[Jeffrey_Zola]

Altenbach- 237 Kudos for that old suggestion and still "new" status? Hmmm. Wasn't there a discussion here a few months back about how the forum members would like feedback from NI regarding suggestions here that acquired a large enough support?

I size FP's to their contents, but most of mine aren't narrow enough to have pulldowns or toolbar items obscured. It would definitely be a PITA, however!

Would an option of decoupling Front Panels from the menus/toolbars associated with LabVIEW's working with FP's be attractive to anyone? There'd be a "Control" window that can be set to be "always on top" that can be sized to a user's menus and tooolbars in addition to windows for whatever Front Panels are open.

Jeff

[johnsold]

This is not an issue on the Mac - the menu is attached to the monitor window, not the FP window.  This may be something carried over from the early, Mac-only days of LV.

Lynn

[AristosQueue (NI)]

> This is not an issue on the Mac - the menu is attached to the monitor window,

> not the FP window.  This may be something carried over from the early, Mac-only days of LV.

It is not a carry-over. The "menubar across top of screen" system is the OS standard for all applications on OSX.

[Yamaeda]

Many (most?) programs have a ">>"-button to give you access to the full menu if the window isn't big enough, that'd be a good solution.

/Y

[GregSands]

Not just the menus, but also the row of toolbar buttons  (Font, Align, etc) below the menu.  There's no way to access those with Alt, or any other keystrokes (can't add keyboard shortcuts for them).

[Manzolli]

It would be nice having something similar to the Mac behavior in Windows. Kudos!

[d.w.b]

> Not just the menus, but also the row of toolbar buttons...

The following idea goes into great detail about that but was marked as a duplicate: https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Make-all-toolbar-buttons-accessible-regardless-of-win...

[wiebe@CARYA]

On Windows, you can actually select the left most menu and use the arrows to move to menus on the right, even if they are not visible: