"About..." box editor for built applications

[altenbach]

When distributing a built application, the about box needs to follow certain NI guidelines regarding copyright notices and such. In order to remain compliant, I typically don't create my own custom about box, but simply leave the stock runtime engine "about" screen intact (see also this discussion and this earlier idea.).

This seems to be more complicated that necessary.

Since NI has certain requirements about what needs to be on there, I propose an "About box" editor, accessible from the "build application" dialog. It would start from a template with all the required components present and some standard fields and panels that can be customized. (In some ways, this would be similar to the installer build, which allows embedding of custom images, etc. for the install dialog).

• There should be automatically updated "variable" fields, allowing for automatic content generated a build time: For example the "build version", "build date", "toplevel file name", etc.
• It should allow the presence (or absence) of optional components currently visible in the stock NI LabVIEW about box, such as memory usage.
• It should allow for custom buttons and web links (e.g. to a local readme or a company website, etc.)
• All fields should allow custom background coloring, including background images.
• etc.

Here's an image of the current LV 2009 about box. There are many areas (e.g. A, B, C, etc.) that would allow full customization. Required components, such as the copyright notices should be static and not removable.

We should be guaranteed that if we create an 'about" box with this tool, it conforms to all NI requirements, including for all toolkits that are part of the build.

[fabric]

Seems like it could become a little restrictive for applications with a heavily customized UI... What if NI simply included a VI in the palettes which produced all the required fields on it's outputs? That VI could then be used with whatever visual theme the developer chooses.

[altenbach]

>> Seems like it could become a little restrictive for applications with a heavily customized UI

The use of this editor should definitely not be mandatory. In a heavily customized environment it should still be possible to do the about box the old fashioned way. I don't think any of this should be in the palettes. A generic "about" window could be included as a template.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

I like this idea.

[Daklu]

I like the idea in principle; however, my single biggest frustration with Labview is the canned solutions are often not quite what is needed, but diverting from the canned solution usually requires rebuilding everything from scratch.  There's no way to drop down to a higher level api used to create the canned  solution.

I agree with fabric that an about box api exposing required about box information would be useful.  The about box editor would use the api in its own code.  To be perfectly honest I haven't paid too much attention to NI's about box requirements.  If there were an easy way to access that information I'd be more likely to do it.

(As I think about this, couldn't all of this be accomplished using user-created tools?)