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LabVIEW Idea Exchange

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asbo

Horizontal Scroll Hotkey

Status: New

Re-opening because of a request to reconsider this functionality for LabVIEW now that LabVIEW NXG has been discontinued.

By default, the mouse scroll wheel scrolls the block diagram or front panel vertically, CTRL+SCROLL scrolls through cases/events/sequences and adding the SHIFT modifer to either accelerates the scroll. In order to scroll horizontally, however, the mouse has to be hovering over the horizontal scrollbar. Because of the predominant left-to-right, top-to-bottom style of diagram organization, it would be excellent to have a more accessible way to scroll horizontally.

 

I haven't found anywhere ALT+SCROLL is used - I think horizontal scrolling is a good candidate to fill that spot.

 

 

31 Comments
PConrad
Member
Horizontal scrolling mice (mice that you can tilt the wheel left or right) are also not supported.
John80
Member

This feature is also available in Inkscape, my favorite open source Vector Based Graphics editor, in fact, I was thinking of posting this same feature request, and let me tell you, this feature is awesome and should not be that hard to implement.

 

In fact, if we put our heads together, we could probably hook into the LabVIEW Window event chain and do it ourselves!

Staffan Palm
Member

This is great and simple feature I have thought of for some time.

Currently not even rotating the mouse sideways before scrolling helps! 🙂

ColdenR
NI Employee (retired)

This is a feature present in many circuit design and PCB layout programs. LabVIEW's style is similar to circuit design programs in a way, since you are wiring up different functional blocks. I think this is a great idea for a feature and would make LabVIEW smoother and easier to use.

Colden
evan1138
Member

A silent scream every time I scroll sideways in LV and nothing happens. Since I can scroll sideways in every other program that needs it, by habit I always try it with LV, every single time. The screaming has been going on for years now. And not only is the feature not implemented, there is not even a comment from NI that I have found about why it's not.

heel
Member

Yes it is almost a paradox: LV being left-right flow oriented, but you can only scroll up-down in a simple manner.

Shift+Wheel is free to use and is in fact used by many other graphical drawing GUI's.

 

Why hasn't this been implemented many years ago? It appears to be an easy fix, which does not touch any delicate code generation aspects haunted by reliability and compatibility issues.

heel
Member

Mouse wheel click down is used in many programs to do panning. Very handy.

LabVIEW appears to link this button to "select region" which is already covered very nicely with left button down.

 

So why not link wheele click so something useful such as panning?

 

By the way can the user configure what the buttons do? If not, why not?

ghighuphu
Active Participant

Dear listening devs, I am a novice to LV and I have problems with user-friendliness of the interface. I already see that using LV will not do better to my RSI (repetitive strain injury) that I have been developing using a PC. I beg you! Please, steal these better ideas (side-wise scrolling and panning) from other GUI environments! Especially, because your program is GUI and mouse based... Cheers,

 

edit: Additionally, the arrows on the keyboard do nothing. If I click to the background of my VI (the grey surface), I expect that the arrows would move the page in all directions.

 

X.
Trusted Enthusiast
Trusted Enthusiast

You've got to wonder whether this has been patented by some patent troll company and therefore would be a hassle to implement.

heel
Member

The best alternative to a horizontal scroll I have found is ctrl+shift  over open space when having the auto-tool selected (green box in Tools palette)t. 

 

This brings up the panning "hand" which is better than nothing.

 

Shift-Tab will enable the auto-tool by the way.

 

So ctrl+shift could become you new favorite keystroke