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silmaril

Tab Controls with Splitter Bars

Status: New

Each page of a tab control should behave just like a pane does.

This means it should be possible to put splitter bars on a tab page.

This way one could build real nice front panels that look good when resizing, even when using tab controls.

 

At the moment I always have to decide: Do I need several tabs or is it important to be able to resize the panel?

There is no way to have both at the same time

 

(OK, there is one way - but I know much better ways to spend my time than programming all those pixel calculations to resize every control programmatically  :smileytongue:)

 

Here is a quick scetch of a dialog front panel that could be improved very much by using splitter bars and  "fit control to pane":

 

 TabCtlExample.png

 

Look what happens when the panel is resized: It's a big waste of space that could be put to a better use by extending the tree.

 

  TabCtlExample2.png

 

6 Comments
Mads
Active Participant

I agree. I posted a more basic idea earlier.... (http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Fit-to-pane-Fit-to-tab/idi-p/932452), but to be able to have multiple elements scale differently on the same page that idea would need to be supplemented with splitter bars. So - 9 kudos indirectly for this.:-)

silmaril
Member

Mads: I think your suggestion is practically a 100% subset of this one. So thank you very much for the 9 kudos 😉

 

I think it might be very difficult for NI to integrate the idea "page = pane" into the existing tab control.

So let me say that I'd find it perfectly all right if there was an additional "Pane Tab Control" (or whatever you want to call it).

As long as I get the usability...

 

shew82
Member

One workaround I used for this kind of thing was to use an XControl on the tab page -> that way the whole "control" gets resized as per the current methods but you can add splitters etc within the xcontrol to fine tune the resizing within the elements.

 

...However, Xcontrols are not necessarily the easiest of LabVIEW constructs to get ones head around

carls__
Member

In addition to splitters, treating tabs like panes should allow you to use the "Fit control to pane" option for things like listboxes or sub panels that could fill an entire tab.

Zafer.Depe
Active Participant

I suggested similar behaviour for Tab Controls (Tab Controls with Scrollbars) but got no kudos. I hope your idea also includes scrollbars.

silmaril
Member

Of course my suggestion includes scrollbars as well!

 

That's the beauty of using he concept of panes that is already there: You can use all the features panes bring with them.

Even better: If NI decides to add more functionality to panes in the future, the "pane tab control" would profit as well without any need for additional implementation (I am omitting testing though).