Customizing a tab control

[VLg]

Hi all,

I am trying to customize some controls appearances for my application, and have been going through some of the UI custom themes on the NI website.

I'm now stuck at the tab control - when I open up Control Editor and add a tab control, and then go to "Customize Mode", I am not able to get the typical menu if I right-click the tab control. The typical menu for other controls include options to "Import Picture from Clipboard", "Import from File",etc.

After which I looked at the UI custom themes from the NI website again, such as the Metallic Theme and NI Theme, and realise they do not have the tab control as well.

A search on the forums also revealed a thread here, dating from quite a few years back, about not able to use the tab control as a customized control. 

Thus my quesstion is, is the tab control still not able to be used as a customized control? And is there a workaround?

Best regards,

Victor

[TiTou]

Have you seen this? I know you can't use it now but maybe the author will release the code one day 😮

Maybe you don't want to go that far for your application... I don't think the possibilities of customization for tabs are huge.

Good luck!

[gmateo]

Hi Victor,

May I know what you are trying to achieve by customizing the tab control? If it is for setting up a type def control then yes this can be achieved in LabVIEW 2010 and 2011. What version of LV are you using right now? However, the options together with "Import Picture..." are still not accessible when customizing the tab control. Thank you.

[VLg]

Hi Titou, thanks for the link! But for my application I just need to customize the appearance of the tab control. But what you show is an interesting application. 😉

Hi Gerrald, yes I am using LabVIEW 2010. Is there a workaround for importing graphics for a tab control typedef?

Best regards,

Victor

[Stephen_C · Accepted solution]

It works fine for me in 2011.

The method I use is to drop the tab control on the front panel.

Make it a typedef

Click EDIT>IMPORT IMAGE TO CLIPBOARD

Import the image we want for the tab

Then right click on the tab of interest

ADVANCED>TAB LAYOUT>IMAGE ONLY

Then right click on the tab again

ADVANCED>TAB LAYOUT>IMPORT IMAGE FROM CLIPBOARD

If this method doesn't work for you, please let me know and I will see if I can get access to a 2010 machine to try it myself.

Regards,

Steve

[gmateo]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for your response. I was able to do what you described for both 2010 and 2011 so i think this should be fine. It adds the image onto the tab label sort of like a logo but it does not change the tab appearance itself.

Hi Victor,

Is this the result that you are trying to achieve for your application?

[Ben]

Sorry if this is a distraction but I posted a hacked up tab control in this thread (see post # 25). Here is a preview.

Ben

[VLg]

Hi Stephen and Gerrald,

Sorry I was caught up with plenty of things and didn't manage to check the forum until today.

Yes the method you suggested is what I want to do - I've tried them out and it works in 2010. Thanks 🙂

I am also intending to customize the tab body, so probably I'll place a graphic for the tab body itself like what Ben did in his post (thanks Ben!), or just make the tab control transparent and drop a graphic onto the front panel as background.

Thanks again everyone. 🙂

Best regards,

Victor