Right-click on LVOOP object wire to Insert Class Methods

[Jim Kring]

I thought that this JKI RCF plugin was so cool that everyone needed to see it. Thanks, Jeffrey for this cool tool!

[GoGators]

I thought that this JKI RCF plugin was so cool that everyone needed to see it. Thanks, Jeffrey for this cool tool!

This is so awesome. I was in the middle of making it myself.

[MikaelH]

Same here, I love it.

//Mikael

[shoneill]

Same here, I love it.

//Mikael

Haven't tried it yet but it sounds way cool.

Any way to implement VIs from the entire class hierarchy? That would save me the hassle of creating dozens of .mnu files which is certainly a good thing.

Shane.

[Jeffrey Habets]

Any way to implement VIs from the entire class hierarchy? That would save me the hassle of creating dozens of .mnu files which is certainly a good thing.

Yep.. Keep monitoring that page.. :-)

[jgcode]

Very Cool

[Jeffrey Habets]

I posted a new version of the Class Tool with some improvements to the menu and it now also shows methods of ancestor classes.

[Aristos Queue]

I posted a new version of the Class Tool with some improvements to the menu and it now also shows methods of ancestor classes.

Your tool makes me both happy and sad, both motivated and depressed.

It is nice to see people using classes and using them so much that they write tools to extend them and make them more useful. It's just this particular tool... you see, this used to be in LabVIEW, but it never shipped. First I was told -- by multiple sources -- that using a text display was bad, that it needed to be the icon display or whatever the user had configured in their Tools>>Options for palette displays. Ok, so I made LV build an on-the-fly graphical palette. But then it was shot down because the layout was inconsistent: things in the palette shouldn't move when a new VI is added to the class, but adding new VIs at the end means nothing is ever findable. Can't you make it alphabetical but read my mind and not be alphabetical when I don't want them to be? Shouldn't virtual folders have something to do with it? Why aren't the parent methods folded in? Why are they in sub folders? Shouldn't they be in superfolders? What the heck is a superfolder? Perhaps the palettes should be named in iambic pentameter. Can you make all the icons rhyme?

Eventually I went crazy, had a nervous breakdown, and killed the feature. Clearly, anything we did automatically was undesirable. Another member of my team made it so that a .mnu file could be associated with a class so that users could define their own layout for the VIs. I've never felt like revisiting the issue.

I commend your work on this feature. I am surprised this thread is not full of people complaining about how useless it is.

[vugie]

...that using a text display was bad, that it needed to be the icon display or whatever the user had configured in their Tools>>Options for palette displays. Ok, so I made LV build an on-the-fly graphical palette. But then it was shot down because the layout was inconsistent: things in the palette shouldn't move when a new VI is added to the class, but adding new VIs at the end means nothing is ever findable. Can't you make it alphabetical but read my mind and not be alphabetical when I don't want them to be? Shouldn't virtual folders have something to do with it? Why aren't the parent methods folded in? Why are they in sub folders? Shouldn't they be in superfolders? What the heck is a superfolder? Perhaps the palettes should be named in iambic pentameter. Can you make all the icons rhyme?

Doesn't it apply to project window as well?

[K-node]

Your tool makes me both happy and sad, both motivated and depressed.

It is nice to see people using classes and using them so much that they write tools to extend them and make them more useful. It's just this particular tool... you see, this used to be in LabVIEW, but it never shipped. First I was told -- by multiple sources -- that using a text display was bad, that it needed to be the icon display or whatever the user had configured in their Tools>>Options for palette displays. Ok, so I made LV build an on-the-fly graphical palette. But then it was shot down because the layout was inconsistent: things in the palette shouldn't move when a new VI is added to the class, but adding new VIs at the end means nothing is ever findable. Can't you make it alphabetical but read my mind and not be alphabetical when I don't want them to be? Shouldn't virtual folders have something to do with it? Why aren't the parent methods folded in? Why are they in sub folders? Shouldn't they be in superfolders? What the heck is a superfolder? Perhaps the palettes should be named in iambic pentameter. Can you make all the icons rhyme?

Clearly, no good deed goes unpunished.

[Wim]

Hi,

I just installed the tool and I agree that this is very nice.

Good work

[Aristos Queue]

Doesn't it apply to project window as well?

You'd think so, wouldn't you? The response there has been very different.

[Daklu]

First I was told -- by multiple sources -- that using a text display was bad

Maybe you talked to too many people. In the future you should just talk to us.

that it needed to be the icon display or whatever the user had configured in their Tools>>Options for palette displays. Ok, so I made LV build an on-the-fly graphical palette. But then it was shot down because the layout was inconsistent: things in the palette shouldn't move when a new VI is added to the class, but adding new VIs at the end means nothing is ever findable. Can't you make it alphabetical but read my mind and not be alphabetical when I don't want them to be? Shouldn't virtual folders have something to do with it? Why aren't the parent methods folded in? Why are they in sub folders? Shouldn't they be in superfolders? What the heck is a superfolder? Perhaps the palettes should be named in iambic pentameter. Can you make all the icons rhyme?

Yep, you talked to too many people. Good music never comes from having too many fingers on your fiddle. Designing a UI that gives a good user experience is hard. As engineers we tend to prefer things with lots of options that we can customize. UI designers like to design interfaces "right" so they don't need to be customized. A good UI designer understands his target audience and the kinds of tasks they will want to do. Including a customizable option means they couldn't design that part of the UI correctly. (Though there may be perfectly valid reasons for it.)

I resisted this idea for a long time. I figured having a default UI for basic users with lots of customizable options for advanced users would make everyone happy. The problem is that implementing n additional options requires 2^n effort and most users will use only a small part of the functionality. You can eliminate a lot of unnecessary coding with a proper UI design. Sometimes there is no "right" or "wrong" way to do it and you just have to make a decision. Users generally adapt pretty quickly even if it's not the way they would have preferred it.

I've never felt like revisiting the issue.

I don't blame you. I'm curious... where did you get all this feedback from? It sounds like the kind of requests you'd get from a public posting on the NI forums or (*gasp*) even here. Doesn't NI have usability teams to provide developers with guidance on how features should behave in the IDE?

Edited September 17, 2009 by Daklu

[Jim Kring]

Your tool makes me both happy and sad, both motivated and depressed.

It is nice to see people using classes and using them so much that they write tools to extend them and make them more useful. It's just this particular tool... you see, this used to be in LabVIEW, but it never shipped. First I was told -- by multiple sources -- that using a text display was bad, that it needed to be the icon display or whatever the user had configured in their Tools>>Options for palette displays. Ok, so I made LV build an on-the-fly graphical palette. But then it was shot down because the layout was inconsistent: things in the palette shouldn't move when a new VI is added to the class, but adding new VIs at the end means nothing is ever findable. Can't you make it alphabetical but read my mind and not be alphabetical when I don't want them to be? Shouldn't virtual folders have something to do with it? Why aren't the parent methods folded in? Why are they in sub folders? Shouldn't they be in superfolders? What the heck is a superfolder? Perhaps the palettes should be named in iambic pentameter. Can you make all the icons rhyme?

Eventually I went crazy, had a nervous breakdown, and killed the feature. Clearly, anything we did automatically was undesirable. Another member of my team made it so that a .mnu file could be associated with a class so that users could define their own layout for the VIs. I've never felt like revisiting the issue.

I commend your work on this feature. I am surprised this thread is not full of people complaining about how useless it is.

Thanks for sharing this story. On my side of things, I've been frustrated by the lack of usability features in LabVIEW related to LVOOP. It makes me happy to know that you've been fighting the good fight. Please let us know how we can help.

[shoneill]

Your tool makes me both happy and sad, both motivated and depressed.

It is nice to see people using classes and using them so much that they write tools to extend them and make them more useful. It's just this particular tool... you see, this used to be in LabVIEW, but it never shipped. First I was told -- by multiple sources -- that using a text display was bad, that it needed to be the icon display or whatever the user had configured in their Tools>>Options for palette displays. Ok, so I made LV build an on-the-fly graphical palette. But then it was shot down because the layout was inconsistent: things in the palette shouldn't move when a new VI is added to the class, but adding new VIs at the end means nothing is ever findable. Can't you make it alphabetical but read my mind and not be alphabetical when I don't want them to be? Shouldn't virtual folders have something to do with it? Why aren't the parent methods folded in? Why are they in sub folders? Shouldn't they be in superfolders? What the heck is a superfolder? Perhaps the palettes should be named in iambic pentameter. Can you make all the icons rhyme?

Eventually I went crazy, had a nervous breakdown, and killed the feature. Clearly, anything we did automatically was undesirable. Another member of my team made it so that a .mnu file could be associated with a class so that users could define their own layout for the VIs. I've never felt like revisiting the issue.

I commend your work on this feature. I am surprised this thread is not full of people complaining about how useless it is.

It makes me a bid sad and a little angry to hear this.

This is a major thing missing when using LVOOP. Text, while perhaps inferior to icons (Assuming during development that the icons say anything yet) is far far superior to nothing, or even worse having to generate dozens of mnu files.

Find whoever told you to not do this, tell them I wrote a response on the topic and them kick them in the shins. Tell them it's from me. Then kick them again and tell them it's from everybody else who would love this feature and that they should b happy you don't kick them once for EACH and EVERY person who would have loved this.

Shane.

[Jeffrey Habets]

Your tool makes me both happy and sad, both motivated and depressed.

... Perhaps the palettes should be named in iambic pentameter. Can you make all the icons rhyme?

Hmmm, I think this would make LV a bit to artistic..

Eventually I went crazy, had a nervous breakdown, and killed the feature. Clearly, anything we did automatically was undesirable. Another member of my team made it so that a .mnu file could be associated with a class so that users could define their own layout for the VIs. I've never felt like revisiting the issue.

I commend your work on this feature. I am surprised this thread is not full of people complaining about how useless it is.

Well, at least it's good to here that some people at do NI thinks about usability of features..

I have to agree with some comments made here, something is always better than nothing at all.. It's very cool we've got the native classes, but it's simply to much of a hassle to work with them out-of-the-box. There's always been a lack of usability features for classes and to be honest, if it weren't for Endevo's GDS, I doubt I would be using the native classes today (or I would at least have build some wizards myself..).

I'm a bit surprised NI didn't just let this feature make it into the release (or at least in a beta release) and let the users give feedback on it. Indeed you'll probably get a lot of comments as you also did get internally. These should then be considered very useful input to consider what should be changed and/or configurable for the next release.

So now.. Will it come back in 2010 or should I just keep on coding?

[PJM_labview]

So now.. Will it come back in 2010 or should I just keep on coding?

Regardless of the answer to this question, keep coding. I want more features now!

PJM

[Michael Aivaliotis]

Here's another feature request. When you right-click on the class wire, you get options to create new VIs.

[Aristos Queue]

So now.. Will it come back in 2010 or should I just keep on coding?

It's definitely NOT going to make 2010. As I said at NI Week... you should expect very few LVOOP features in the next one, possibly two, releases. What we're working on now will take significant time and attention, with little bandwidth to spare in the interim.

[GregSands]

It's definitely NOT going to make 2010. As I said at NI Week... you should expect very few LVOOP features in the next one, possibly two, releases. What we're working on now will take significant time and attention, with little bandwidth to spare in the interim.

Well then, I guess you'd better tell us what NOT to be working on, just so as we don't duplicate effort

Edited September 20, 2009 by GregSands

[crelf]

Here's another feature request. When you right-click on the class wire, you get options to create new VIs.

yes Yes YES! Please add this to the idea exchange.

[Btram]

yes Yes YES! Please add this to the idea exchange.

Has this been added to the idea exchange? I looked and couldn't find it.

[Aristos Queue]

Has this been added to the idea exchange? I looked and couldn't find it.

Yes. Here:

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Insert-class-VI-contextual-menu/idi-p/996055#A2548

[Jeffrey Habets]

I released a new version: http://decibel.ni.co...t/docs/DOC-6771

Due to lack of spare time it's only been tested sparsly under LV86, but I didn't want it to ly around for to long here since it's more usefull than the previous version imho.

So I'm very interested in any feedback on problems that you find, especially under LV2009 and up.