LabVIEW Idea Exchange

NI has a private method for returning the hWnd of a VI but there is no "publicly" available method for this. The private method is already shared around forums and used extensively as interacting with the Win32 APIs is a common need for advanced UIs. The appearance configs for VIs only work relative to other VIs and trying to develop LabVIEW based applications that are used alongside other applications presents many roadblocks, even with other NI software such as TestStand. (TestStand has an API method for getting the hWnd!)

The other method commonly used is to also use the Win32 FindWindow call however this presents issues if there are multiple windows with the same captions (easy enough with Cloned VIs) and is not a robust approach.

For reasons outlined in detail in this idea, the the expression node should be redesigned. These vertical lines are too thick and the end arrows are pointless and too busy.

After all, the expression node is basically a [single line|single variable] formula node and for this reason it should look more similar to a formula node.

Here is my suggestion for the redesigned expression node (on the right). The current design is shown on the left for comparison.

Note that the grey left and right borders are exactly matched to the border design of the formula node, making things consistent and intuitive. (Top and bottom should remain single pixel to save diagram space). 

Sometimes, it can be useful to know the last event handled by an event structure.

While I have many, one of my major gripes with LabVIEW is that it's very easy to have dozens of open windows.  This would normally not be a terrible burden, but LabVIEW has a bad habit of raising ALL open LabVIEW Windows when any single one is given focus.

For example, if I have both the front panel and block diagram windows of 3 VIs, a project window, the VI palettes, and a ctrl+h help window open, then clicking any one brings all 10 windows to the front.  This is a problem if, for example, I'm trying to draw an icon based on some source image from Google image search.  I am forced to maneuver all LabVIEW windows and the browser window such that the two things I actually want are both visible at the same time.

To get around this, and other difficulties introduced by the huge numbers of windows that labview is fond of creating, I propose this idea based on the relatively recent addition of a "Single Window Mode" to the open source photo editor Gimp (http://www.gimp.org).

In the original Gimp UI, each open image occupies a unique window.  Additionally, the toolbox and other dialog windows (layers, brushes, etc.) occupy unique windows as well.  This, to me, is remarkably similar to the LabVIEW UI.

In Gimp's Single Window Mode, the toolbox and any open dialogs can be locked to one side of the screen and each open image is in a tab.  (Note that this is strongly influenced by Photoshop's UI.)

I would like to see something very similar to this for labview.  In this concept, each open VI would occupy a tab (perhaps split vertically into front panel and block diagram) and open dialogs (such as VI palette, ctrl+h help window, navigation window, project explorer, etc.) could be docked to the screen edges.  Here is a rendering of such a concept.

I would note that most text IDEs (such as Eclipse, Visual Studio, etc.) use a very similar paradigm (ie lots of source files open in tabs, project viewer, find+replace, etc locked to screen edges).  Clearly more thought would have to be given to how front panels are displayed, e.g. outside of a labview development environment, but I feel that this concept would be a dramatic improvement for the development task.

1. Allow for "Tabbed Browsing" of VI's to better manage windows.

2. Allow for the BD to be open independent of the FP.

3. Allow dockable palettes... dock to either the edge of the screen, or to the top bar (pictured below) of LabVIEW.

4. As a bonus, consider being able to open PDF's, txt's, and html's in tabs also for Help and documentation.

5. Finally, allow the project tree to be docked into the IDE.

Please, add your own IDE upgrade ideas in this discussion - illustrations will be especially helpful here. If it's a major enough idea, create a new idea!

Originally suggested by RavensFan.

LabVIEW scripting makes it possible to automate repetitive tasks in LabVIEW, but it is often difficult to find the properties and invoke nodes to accomplish the task. It would be great to have a recording feature that watches what you do in LabVIEW, and then generates the corresponding code for it. I'm sure the engineers at NI could design it much better than any more specific ideas I could throw out, so I will leave the rest up to them.