System Explorer window is not resizable

[BillMe]

Wow, I thought this would have been a no brainer. Resizing the window is disabled and the system tree pane can't be resized either. There's nothing more frustrating then drilling down into the tree and watching your names disappear off to the right. Hovering over every single signal to see the entire name is just a waste of time.

It's interesting that this window has been hobbled in this way since setting the properties to allow the user to manipulate the size is trivial. 

[DangerDave]

BillMe,

I appreciate you taking the time to post with this feedback.  I can see how the inability to resize could become inconvenient as both the tree and names get larger.  Though I don't know the details behind why that setting has been disabled, I can at least point out that there should be a scroll bar at the bottom for the tree which should let you scroll over to see the full names without having to hover over each one individually.

I'm attaching a screenshot of the system explorer window of the engine demo project for reference.

Kind Regards,

David Randolph

Applications Engineer

National Instruments

[Eric.M · Accepted solution]

Secret/Pro tip:

- Create a file called System Explorer.ini in C:\ProgramData\National Instruments\NI VeriStand 20xx\System Explorer (ProgramData is a hidden folder, make sure your explorer can see it)

- Write these lines in that file:

[System Explorer]

Resizable=true

- Restart NIVS

Your System Explorer should now resize the tree part.

Yeah there's a typo in the key name but this is how it works... ^^

--Eric

[BillMe]

David,

I was forced to use the scroll bars, but to keep moving the mouse to the horizontal scroll bar after selecting the next child in the tree became ridiculous. Eric's INI "secret" did the trick.

[Eric.M]

Not a secret anymore. I blame you ^^

[FranckYin]

This is a relief, thank you for sharing this tip.

[ATarman]

This is a great hack.  Thank you Eric.M!

Is there a similar option to make the center window pane divider adjustable left-to-right?  

[Darin_G]

As of VeriStand 2020 R2, System Explorer now is resizable in this way by default -- without the INI token.

Unfortunately, we don't have a method for moving the center window pane divider. You will have to resize horizontally and the tree area will expand/contract while the 'details pane' remains a fixed width. 

Looking ahead into the bright future of VeriStand, we are working to bring System Explorer configuration options into the newer VeriStand Editor (gray UI) piece by piece. Ultimately, users should spend less and less time in this part of the product which has a great number of limitations on the UX we can achieve because of its long history.