Eliminate Palette Space added with LV2016

[James@Work]

After reading Restore High Contrast Icons I procrastinated as long as possible before installing LV2016.  When I finally did, I was disappointed by the additional space required for the palettes; all of them!  I have been using LabVIEW since 5.0 and switched to an Icon view of the palettes shortly after getting comfortable with the graphics.  Now, I have to move my mouse further to get to each sub-menu and VI selection.  It's a waste of developer's time and apparently done for absolutely no good reason except to make a change; very similar to the washed out icons.

This extra space needs to be removed or at least an option provided to set the spacing back to the condensed spacing always available.

These images to show the relative size of the palettes LV2016 vs. 2015.

Controls Palette

Functions Palette

Yes, this might seem trivial, until you think about traversing several palettes to get to your needed VI.

*Random example, if one were doing FTP development they'd pin the menu.

** The original size of the above graphic is 1030 pixels wide; less than 800 for 2015.

Quit messing with what works and has become the standard with regards to options.  At least when that ridiculous "default" setting for icons instead of terminals was introduced we could undo the setting in Options. 

It seems that NI has hired some non-G experts to mess up the interface simply so they can enumerate all the "great" improvements they've made.  Or, was all the extra space to make sure newbies couldn't miss the folder tab, since connecting the "right arrow" on an icon to it being a sub-folder would be too difficult for children?

[Greg_McKaskle2]

If you are looking for where to aim your pitch forks, look no further.

I made changes to palettes and helped with the toolbars, dragging, and growing features.

The initial goal with the palettes was to update the look and feel - more like the Finder and File Explorer, and to make them more readable. Far too many items in the palettes contained ... because they were limited to one line. Two lines of text made a huge difference in the number of ... present.

The box around the palettes with the arrow has always been problematic. I know, I added it fifteen years ago. I sketched and spoke with visual designers about a newer container that was entirely outside the icon. NG hadn't settled on the folder at that time, but we finalized it and agreed to both use it.

If palettes were entirely leaf icons or entirely a collection of subPalettes, the grid could be optimized, but since many palettes contain icons and subPalettes, the grid space needs to be big enough for the folder border. The folder was not very legible without a bit of padding around it. And that is how the grid grew a bit.

I also found that fonts were a bit wacky and changed sizes of fonts here and there. I wasn't concerned with missed clicks, but with readability.

Do I use LV? Why yes I do. I use it quite a lot, and I teach and train new users on it. I use the Category (Standard) setting, which means that most items are not labeled. I was using LV2015 just the other day for myRIO testing and it is such a jumble. I much prefer the extra space between icons and I think it is well worth the amount of space it took to accomplish.

Do I ever run out of screen space? Of course. That happens in 2015 as well, just differently. To try and prevent this, would require a different approach. It is not a matter of just shrinking stuff.

So in summary. I added the space. I also added some about fifteen or more years ago when we supported subpalettes and icons in the same grid. I also added color to the palettes way back in LV4 I think and that made the resources HUGE and slowed down drawing. All of these changes perturb some users because -- well, I just rearranged the furniture in a room you are accustomed to. It feels wrong, perhaps looks wrong, and you may stub your toe if you are on auto-pilot and aren't paying attention to where you are walking. But the palettes were UGLY and hard to find what you were looking for. I use the product every day and I believe this change should have been made about 8 or 10 years ago. This was not made because of NG. It was made in spite of NG. If not for NG, I would have done it sooner and probably spent more time on it.

I'm happy to answer questions about this. I hope the bit of back-story helps. The palette code is too full of customization features as it is, and making a customizable grid editor while fixing bugs with fonts and such is not really in the cards. I believe you will actually like and appreciate the changes once you use it for a few hours. If you see something that seems wrong or annoys you, by all means, use the forums and/or NIWeek and NIDays meetings to give the feedback. I/we do listen. 

Greg McKaskle

[smmarlow]

"The deep palette issue that you are mentioning is largely addressed by two existing features:  QuickDrop and pinned palettes. By using ctrl+space, the bulk of our heavy users avoid use of the palettes most of the time."   

Ah yes!  There it is.  The old "you have a problem because you don't use quick drop" which is becoming very tiresome.  Please stop using the QD feature as a fig leaf for design decisions that negatively impact people who don't use it.  Being a manual tool selection user, I rarely use QD because it requires me to type more with my left hand, and move it from the space-tab position required for manual tool selection.  I am much faster at right-hand mouse operations.  I am what you call a "heavy user", having programmed full-time in LabVIEW for almost 25 years.  I have a very good map of the palettes in my head (occasional random changes to it by the NI dev team notwithstanding) , and am quite fast at using them, even with the new extra space.  Fortunately, my employer provided me with a new computer and a 32-inch 2560x1440 monitor to go along with my transition to LV2016.  

I agree the crammed layout of the old palettes was getting out of hand as monitor resolutions increased, but the addition of extra space should be proportional to monitor resolution and not fixed, which is problematic for older monitors.  With that said, the best short-term solution for 2016 users who aren't interested in completely changing their programming style is to get a higher resolution monitor.  You'll need one eventually anyway.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

It's not a fig leaf. It's observation of user behavior. Fewer and fewer users are doing deep dives into the palettes on a regular basis. We make decisions as they affect the user base as a whole, trying to benefit as many users as possible, all the while knowing that benefiting everyone is impossible.

[smmarlow]

You are correct that deep dives are infrequent.  That is the due to the fact that deeply-placed functions are typically those that are infrequently used.  If I do have a project where deeply-placed functions are required, I pin the sub-palette.  I guess I have just grown weary of hearing that we should all be using QD for everything.  Some of us don't like the left-hand operations required for it.  I am an old dude who developed a particular style many years ago that made me fast in the days before QD.  When the automatic tool selector came out, I found it slow to select the proper tool, requiring significant hovering on small targets to get it to react, so I quickly gave up on it and have never used it again (I know it's faster and improved now, but quite frankly, I just don't care.  I still don't use it).  When QD was introduced, I found the motions significantly interfered with my manual-tool style, and so learning it was slow.  I basically had to try and rewire entirely the way I had been programming for years.  I eventually gave up and went back to my old style, because I was never quite as fast.  A typical install for me is:

TURN OFF: automatic tool selector, automatic error handling, automatic wiring, auto wire routing, big red X's on broken wires, place terminals as icons.

Set Palettes to "Category (Standard)" (i.e. no text)

[James@Work]

Greg,

Thanks for the detailed feedback.  I like the folders, just thought too much space was added between them.  The QD tools are great and I use them, however, I can typically find a VI in the palette faster than I can remember it's name and type it in left-handed; deep dive or not.

AQ,

If fewer and fewer are using the palettes, wouldn't it makes sense to optimize them for those who do? 

The extra palette space when formatting is set to Icons doesn't effect any user except those who use this view.  The reason for using that view is it provides the most compressed view possible.  To those that use Icons view, the extra padding is very noticeable negative.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

> wouldn't it makes sense to optimize them for those who do?

Yes. And so it is optimized around what we [LV R&D] believe best enables visual scanning and readability. The complaint is that we have changed the time needed to move across those palettes and changed the muscle memory of the palettes for the way they flow. Neither of those apply to the rarely used deep functions.

> To those that use Icons view, the extra padding is very noticeable negative.

To some of you, yes. Not to all who use that view agree. Some don't notice and some like the change. Getting numbers on that distribution is hard. Those who don't like something often speak up. Those who are neutral or positive almost never do. If *all* of the negative views could be counted on to speak up, we could determine the count, but that's not the case.

[James@Work]

It's NOT just about deep dives, it's that individual palettes cover 1.5X plus the area on the screen.  The wasted space when pinned and the additional mouse movement required to traverse even within a single palette are issues.

It's not going to kill me and I'll get used to it, but am glad I waited as long as I could before moving to 2016.

I got into electrical engineering because I could design schematics and PCBs with one hand on a trackball, and LabVIEW for the same reason for writing software.  I'm not the typical user, but when changes make programming more difficult or slower I feel felt required as a user to mention them.  However, I can see that is simply a waste of my time and yours.  With regards to changes; LV R&D knows what's best us.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

> With regards to changes; LV R&D knows what's best us.

I wish. We don't know... we merely guess and try to back those up with data.

[Michael_78]

This is almost 50% of my screen, and a scrollbar to get at the options below Select a VI...

This is unworkable, and a new computer will not fix it.  For the same screen size a higher resolution would make LabVIEW impossible.  I cant believe we are talking about miss-clicks, when the next thing the user has to do is wire up the terminals.

We don't all have dual 24" monitors for LabVIEW.  I try to use QD whenever I can, but often i do not know the names of the functions I need.  Please make spacing an option.

[Herbert]

I agree with all negative comments about the new, space wasting palettes.

Herbert