Michael Aivaliotis

So with the site upgrade came some changes in the way solutions can be flagged as solving the original poster's question. Previously, there was a button next to a post that allowed you to mark an answer as the best solution to a question. Now this has been removed.

It was removed because there is creators of the forum software decided that question and answer-type interactions are different from "discussions" where there is no clear answer. So now there are 2 types of forums. Discussions and question\answer.

The "question" in this post is: Do you think we should change-over some of the forums into a question\answer format?

Of course without context, how can you answer that? So I decided to switch one of the forums to a question\answer format. That way, we can all experience what it's like.

The LabVIEW General forum has been switched (it can be switched back).

As always, feedback welcome.

So it looks like I'm getting biased answers. I get it. Nobody hangs out on ni.com.

I'll use the line I use on my kids. "Just tell me the truth, you won't get in trouble, I promise."

Here are new topic stats for LAVA since 2009:

New post stats of the same period.

The dips at the beginning of every year is the Christmas break and New Years.

11 minutes ago, hooovahh said:

LAVA and the NI communities serve very different groups.

Perhaps the groups served by LAVA are shrinking?

I've been away from the LAVA forums for a couple years. Recently, due to some site maintenance. I decided to hang out and check out some of the cool discussions here on LAVA... I'm still trying to find them.

So is LabVIEW just fading in popularity? Being relegated to some obscure language nobody cares about? Or have the cool kids gone somewhere else? Where do you go to discuss exciting LabVIEW topics, or even boring ones? I really want to know because I want to hang out there too!

LAVA served a purpose to connect people in an independent forum where none existed before. Does LAVA still need to exist in this age of hundreds of ni.com communitiues? Has LAVA's glory passed? Or is it simply that we need some restructuring to get interest back again?

Honest feedback welcome.

Ya it seems to be Chrome related. But restarting Chrome or clearing the Cache fixes it.

Well, if you call the dialog and you don't have a cached previous path. then you feed it a known location. For example, the user documents folder. Every other time, you use the previously used path.

21 minutes ago, BBL said:

but when i run it as an exe, it is blank and no errors are generated

This is strange. If the DVR is invalid there will definitely be errors.

Based on what you've told us and the code above. I'd say that there simply is no data in the DVR. Is it being written to the DVR correctly? The above code shown is not good for debugging. You need to put the IPE structure in some kind of loop. It only executes once as shown, right?

1 minute ago, Yair said:

The problem is that I have no idea what is or isn't baked in.

No worries. My point is that none of that layout is customizable from the Admin panel. For example, you could request from them the ability to hide the date groupings category tag as a user customizable option.

What makes you think the DVR is not working? Is there an error message accessing the DVR like it's invalid or something? What's the message?

I don't think there is. it looks like if you create a small icon, it forces the full square size on the diagram and the blank space turns grey.

18 hours ago, ShaunR said:

Two out of those three are disabled by Admin so can we have them back please?

I just enabled everything. I think if you want an email for every reply. It's this:

16 hours ago, Yair said:

Edit: for comparison, here's the same page after adding the rule lavag.org##li.ipsStreamItem_time (which blocks these elements) to my adblocker:

I'm cool with listening to these suggestions and help hash them out here. But they won't get far with me. My years of of editing html and customizing stuff is years behind me. Not to mention I have to manage it when the site gets upgraded. If it's not baked into the framework, sorry.

So my suggestion is to go to the source here: https://invisionpower.com/forums/

Figure out how to provide feedback to them and perhaps they'll incorporate it into a future update.

==

Despite the visual difference to the old unread content page. I'd like to point out the superior filtering and customization of the results. In addition to the ability to create and save personalized streams. Click on "My Activity Streams" so see preconfigured streams. Then at the end you have "Create custom Stream" so you can customize the stream. Some of the choices have a little gear icon with more options. Then you can save it and I believe it has it's own RSS feed as well.

Also, what one person finds annoying, another person finds useful. I like the preview because you get to see a little preview of the post to identify if you need to go deeper or not. There are use-cases for both.

4 hours ago, JKSH said:

If you're using Google Chrome, try this: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-vision/fommidcneendjonelhhhkmoekeicedej

Does it also turn off your hue lights, or make them a dark red?

20 minutes ago, Yair said:

Because this page is the main way I interact with the site, I expect I will find this annoying over time too.

There's also a condensed view, if you click the little icon. Perhaps that's better for you.
It's also live updating which is nice. So you can leave it open and don't have to click refresh.

3 minutes ago, ShaunR said:

Not in my toolbar there isn't

Chrome notifications are cool. I just got notified you posted. Anyway...

I know why the button is missing for you. Because it's disabled by permissions. I think this is wise, since it opens up allowing anyone, including spammers, to post potentially malicious html. So I think I'm gonna leave it off, sorry.

11 hours ago, ShaunR said:

The only thing I haven't figured out (yet) is how to break quotes so I can reply in sections. I used to just change it to text and then split it up inserting the markup but I can't see a text/html button in the new editor. I expect it can be done another way, just that I was using the brute force method

There a few ways to do what you want. One of them: Just highlight a bunch of text you want to quote. Then hover over it. You will see a link "Quote This". That way you can selectively quote whatever.

But to answer your other question. There's a "Source" button on the toolbar to get to the html if that's what you want.

1 hour ago, Neil Pate said:

The file attachment works ok, but the image is missing in Jack's first post linked below

Ok, thanks. I have a support ticket open with IPS. Hopefully they can resolve it.

6 minutes ago, Neil Pate said:

Michael, one of the biggest problems for me with using a VM per project is how to do you manage physical offsite backup of VMs?

How do you manage physical offsite backup of your PC? With VMs it's actually much easier since they're just files. On a Mac, which I use, each VM looks like a single file. I even run VMs on external hard drives which makes it much easier to move around and backup.

Do you use a cloud backup service?

This is probably way off-topic.

Can you link to an example?

13 hours ago, ShaunR said:

Are you really suggesting that every project should be in it's own VM? That would mean I would have  523 VMs (and counting) just for Windows without even considering Linux, Mac, RT, VXWorks or test machines .

It's the workflow I use and it works for me. If I'm juggling 523 projects then perhaps my workflow would be different. I currently have about 10 active projects but maybe 3-4 hot ones. Lots of hard drive space and most of it SSDs. So it's fine. As far as test VMs, you just need one for each OS. It's a judgement call. Perhaps you have one VM that you use for several projects that use the same LV version and reuse libraries - who knows. How do you handle different NI hardware driver versions that come out every 6 months?

We can agree that LabVIEW sucks in this regard. No news there. Using VMs is "Putting the cart before the horse". Sure, but I'm done with creating large scale infrastructure tools to fix some other company's inactivity. Some folks younger than me with more energy to spare can do that - I'm good. I'd rather spend the development effort on my customers, which gives me greater reward and returns. Both emotionally and financially.

Don't get me wrong. I still build tools and reuse libraries. But most likely not a VIPM-type of tool or add-on.

The logo got wiped during the upgrade. I still have it. I just need to put it back. Just waiting for things to settle down a bit.

I'm really liking the new layout and feel of it. It seems more user friendly and mobile responsive.

All the OpenG stuff is now handled by this forum.

Does anyone have a solution to detecting where a drop occurred on a target tree control?

I'm already familiar with the 'Point to Row Column' method. However, that only returns the row of the item you mouse is hovering over during the drop.

See, when a user moves his mouse around, a line is shown exactly where the insert will occur. However this line location, between rows, is not available from what i can see. Regardless of where the line is drawn, the 'Point to Row Column' method returns the mouse hover location instead.