Update Front Panel

[CrystalTech]

Add new features, flexibility, and new controls to the Front Panel.  The only new controls I've seen were made by LabVIEW Customers, and although they were great, they were not resizeable without being distorted (bitmap).  I think it's time for NI to give more options and features for the Front Panel Controls.  I attached some suggestions.  They are there for example, so don't focus on the controls I've made, but the idea of improvements I am suggesting.  NI has done a great job on the Diagrams.  I should hope it's time NI improves the Front Panel.

[smercurio_fc]

This should probably be merged with this idea: Custom Meter/Gauge Needles and this idea: New Front Panel Controls.

What I have always found amusing is that with the numeric controls, the Classic Numeric control does resize the up/down "twiddlers" when you change the font size of the text. 

[falkpl]

Nice examples.  There are several calls for improved UI in labview (new controls, menu glyphs, decorations ....).  Why has this lagged behind for a decade I cant understand.  I am always frustrated with the inability to make reusable LV native custom controls (ie, will scale and link to the color palette correctly).  The 3d look is not modern anymore.  I agree that simple clean buttons with shading and blending is more apealing to the user and yields clean front panels with minimal wasted space.

I HOPE THIS IS ALSO A PRIORITY for future versions of labview.  It can be a harder sell when your application looks old even though it works great and is developed in the latest version.

[CrystalTech]

NI has come out with XControls, and I have tried this.  It is not initially intuative, but I am working on it.  This is why I am suggesting they provide us with more features for controls, and more styles.  I don't necessarily want them to get rid of the older styles... they are okay too.   Just a note on the controls I made.  They were designed in Adobe Flash (from scratch).  I did them all in only one evening, and the designs are limited only by your imagination.  Although I don't think it is necessary for NI to go that far... Like all the wonderful BD features and improvements over the years, I would like some relatively moderate improvements to the FP.  There has been virtually nothing done for 10 years, and I can't think of any reason NI could give me to make me understand this is a good thing. 

[Intaris]

XControls have some great potential but they are NOT full replacements for common controls.  There is no inheritance, fast data updates can lead to some funny effects and they're still more complicated than they should be.

[Michael.Reuter.HL@HeidelbergEngineering.]

This is an great idea. I hope this feature are in the Labview Version 2010

[muks]

Looks pretty....

[fomine]

Man, this is rich!

[phanisrikanth]

all the suggestion were good... boleans ,numeric and controls... are flexible and ease to use....

[Manzolli]

Some old controls are nice but lack of customization and flexibility, as the "Meter" numeric control does.

We need both new controls and some improvement of the old ones.

If they make the controls highly configurable, we will be able to have more out of few basic ones.

[G-Money]

Have you tried out the LabVIEW 2011 Beta? Although not created by this idea, there are new Silver Controls that I think will meet a lot of the demand you were looking for in an updated look for FP controls/indicators.