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tst

Change the "empty space" cursor from the pointing hand to the arrow.

Status: Completed
Available in LabVIEW 2012

Today, when you run a VI, LabVIEW uses the hand cursor as the default cursor when you're not over a control. I believe this should be changed to be the arrow cursor, since much of the concept of the cursor relies on it being context sensitive, and the hand cursor hints that you have something you can click.

 

Change cursor.PNG

 

This can be done today by registering the mouse enter and mouse leave events for all controls and changing the cursor accordinglly and can even be moved into a subVI, but it's kind of pointless to do this for every VI and there are times when you don't want it.


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7 Comments
Intaris
Proven Zealot

Indeed.

 

Never actually noticed that before....

 

Shane

elset191
Active Participant
Yeah, this is annoying.
--
Tim Elsey
Certified LabVIEW Architect
JordanG
NI Employee (retired)
Status changed to: In Beta
 
elset191
Active Participant

I just started using LV 2012 and noticed that the cursor is now the arrow.  Unfortunately, it remains the arrow whenever you hover over anything* else.  It seems to me they just took this problem and inverted it.  Has anyone else noticed this?

 

*Text fields seem to be an exception

 

 

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Tim Elsey
Certified LabVIEW Architect
tst
Knight of NI Knight of NI
Knight of NI

I know that the idea appears as being in beta, but this change was actually done independently of the idea and the implementation is different from what you might expect. The relevant info can be found in the Windows UI guidelines and my understanding is that the Mac behavior is similar - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb545459.aspx

 

Specifically, the relevant text is:

 


To avoid confusion, it is imperative not to use the hand pointer for other purposes. For example, command buttons already have a strong affordance, so they don't need a hand pointer. The hand pointer must mean "this target is a link" and nothing else.


 

So, the UI designers say that buttons don't need the hand because you can already see that they're clickable. I'm not a huge fan of this, but I understand why NI did it and I think it's better than the old behvaior.

 

 


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elset191
Active Participant

Understood.  Thanks for the reference.

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Tim Elsey
Certified LabVIEW Architect
G-Money
NI Employee (retired)
Status changed to: Completed
Available in LabVIEW 2012