[LVTN] UI Tools

[Francois Normandin]

View File

UI Tools

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UI Tools v1.4.0

Copyright © 2009-2016, François Normandin

All rights reserved.

Author:François Normandin

Contact Info: Contact via PM on www.lavag.org

LabVIEW Versions:

Created and tested with LabVIEW 2012

Dependencies:

OpenG Application Control Library >= 4.1.0.7
OpenG Array Library >= 4.1.1.14
OpenG File Library >= 4.0.1.22
OpenG LabVIEW Data Library >= 4.2.0.21
OpenG String Library >= 4.1.0.12
LAVA Palette >= 1.0.0.1

Description:

This package contains tools for designing user interfaces.

• A first palette helps create special effects using transparency of front panel. Using them allows to quickly create fade-ins or outs using linear or exponential variation of the intensity.
• A second palette contains VIs to calculate the position of GObjects for many purposes like alignment, snap, mouse follow, etc.
• A third palette contains VIs to create dialog boxes based on class instances. "Simple Error Dialog" and "Simple Selection List" are featured with or without backrground blackening effect.
• A fourth palette includes some VIs to move objects programmatically on the front panel, using a basic deceleration algorithm to provide an impression of a smooth movement.

The packaged VIs are all namespaced using a suffix “__lava_lib_ui_tools” which should not conflict with any of your own code.

Includes:

• Front Panel Transparency (Fade In & Fade Out)
• Utilities (Alignment, Snap)
• Dialog (OOP based, extensible)
• Engine (Beta) for object movement

Instructions:

This package is distributed on the LabVIEW Tools Network (version 1.3) and updates are on LAVA (1.4). It can be installed directly in the addon folder of any LabVIEW version from 2012 to now. The addon installs automatically under the LAVA palette of the addon submenu.

License:

Distributed under the BSD license.

Support:

If you have any problems with this code or want to suggest features, please go to www.lavag.org and navigate to the discussion page.

 

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• Submitter
  Francois Normandin
• Submitted
  09/21/2009
• Category
  LabVIEW Tools Network Certified
• LabVIEW Version

 

[Francois Normandin]

Here's a little jing video to show the FadeIn - FadeOut effects. Check out the example built with a JKI QSM to see how simply it's done.

FadeIn FadeOut

[Mark Balla]

Certified 9-22-09

Moved to UI Group

[Francois Normandin]

version 1.0.11 released.

I've added an Outlook-style sidebar based on radio buttons. This allows to take advantage of the Enum typedef. Disconnect the typedef and customize with your own buttons, change button order or even style.

http://content.scree...-10-08_1129.swf

[Norm Kirchner]

Francois,

Great job on this. Especially the variety of icons you've got setup.

Any chance you're planning to get more of them into the system Icon style?

Also, I now realize that I've duplicated some of the exact work you've done on the fade in/out and the only difference is that I've found that an exponential rather than linear fade has a nicer visual effect. Any thoughts to that?

[Francois Normandin]

Francois,

Great job on this. Especially the variety of icons you've got setup.

Any chance you're planning to get more of them into the system Icon style?

Also, I now realize that I've duplicated some of the exact work you've done on the fade in/out and the only difference is that I've found that an exponential rather than linear fade has a nicer visual effect. Any thoughts to that?

Hi Norm,

thanks for the comments. Yes, I planned to add all ;)as much as possible of the Nuvola theme icons in there, but the process is long without being able to do that programmatically. Also, I'm putting 100% of my free home time on the Open Office Report Generation (which should come in a few weeks) and then I'll go back to the UI tools copy/paste for buttons. I've already made programmatically all the buttons states in PNG using Vugie's Bitman tools. All remaining is sitting a long night and make it happen. I already received a comment that at least one of my button is misaligned (hover) so I plan to make them all from scratch calculating the exact placement of the icons.

Truth be told, I hadn't thought about using something other than linear fade. I'll definitely give it a try and add this option to the UI Tools. I'll take your word on the fact that it's nicer looking... I'll put exponential as the default case and linear as option. If anybody thinks of other fading algorithms they'd like, I can integrate them as well.

I'll check on ni.com's suggested features to make sure "scalable graphics" support for button edition is in there (and properly kudoed)...

[Ton Plomp]

Nice set Antoine!

One question, is there a specific reason you made the boolean controls as Typedefs?

It creates a new (unnecessary) dependency, I can understand that the Outlook Enum is a typedef, however the boolean controls seems a little bit awkward to me.

Ton

[Antoine Chalons]

Nice set Antoine!

I think you meant "François"

[Ton Plomp]

I think you meant "François"

oops

Ton

PS you don't have an answer?

[Francois Normandin]

Nice set Antoine!

One question, is there a specific reason you made the boolean controls as Typedefs?

It creates a new (unnecessary) dependency, I can understand that the Outlook Enum is a typedef, however the boolean controls seems a little bit awkward to me.

Ton

Hi Ton,

yeah, don't tell me... that was a mistake. I'll be doing an update soon with the stuff Vugie and Rolf have dug out for the programmatic creation of controls. Those won't be typedef'ed and all icons/text will have been programmatically located, so there won't be any mismatch of a pixel or two here and there as can happen when you do it manually.

I actually have real nice series of buttons ready... but they take a few MBs per series and I'm thinking of a way to have it created on the fly like, I don't know, CCT or perhaps a RCF plugins? I'll spend a few nights on that and hopefully I get something useful by Xmas to show off.

Anyway, here's a teaser... teasing82.vi

I think you meant "François"

Français... François. What's the difference? We're all alike, right?

[Ton Plomp]

Hi Ton,

I'll spend a few nights on that and hopefully I get something useful by Xmas to show off.

Anyway, here's a teaser... teasing82.vi

Français... François. What's the difference? We're all alike, right?

Hi François,

how are things coming with christmas passing by?

I really liked the teaser.

Any help I can offer?

One little bug. The palette menu called 'Edition' should be called 'Editting' (I think, I'm no native English speaker)

Ton

[Francois Normandin]

Hi François,

how are things coming with christmas passing by?

I really liked the teaser.

Any help I can offer?

One little bug. The palette menu called 'Edition' should be called 'Editting' (I think, I'm no native English speaker)

Ton

Hi Ton,

I have 90% of it ready. I've had problems with packaging the control.lvclass that I created because of some indetermined conflict while building the package. I've decided to leave it for a later version. I still have to batch create one set of icons (system-style) and I'll be uploading it real soon. The UI Tools will come with a Base package that won't have any icons... and then it will be possible to install add-ons based on the control styles that one wants. The trick is that my first add-on package (Vista-style) is 4MB! I thought of splitting it in many parts, but that would clog the packages list in VIPM... and I'm not sure people would like me for that.

I promise to try uploading it no later than this week-end.

I've added Norm's suggestion of Exponential fade-in/fade-out, plus some rectangle placement tools to build on the OpenG Rectangle Tools (necessary for quick icon alignment...). I've also corrected the "typedef" thing.

That is, thanks for the help offer. You're boasting my morale! With my OpenOffice project lagging behind too, that's a real pleasure to know that this package attracts interest and I'm not antagonizing the "missus"* just for my own sake. (* Yeah, I've had a lot of "You're still behind that computer tonight!" lately...)

For the palette menu, I never thought about it, but I think you're right... a quick look on Google shows that "Edition" is mainly used in printing, like "nth Edition of this book", while Pictures often come with "Editing" (one "t"). So I'll change it to Editing. Thanks.

[Francois Normandin]

The new UI Tools is ready.

See addons and expansion packs:

Custom control creator addon

System-style controls expansion

Vista-style controls expansion

Outlook-style controls expansion

GlassWeb-style controls expansion

Tree & Tagging addon

I've created many expansion packs because the smaller package is around 3MB...

[Brad K]

Hello,

I have downloaded the UI controls from the code repository. They are outstanding!!

I am having an issue with resizing the Vista controls, actually my issue is really just ignorance.

I can change the control size, but I do not know how to change the size of the mouse over highlight box. - the box size changes, but it is clipping the image.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Brad K

[Francois Normandin]

Hello,

I have downloaded the UI controls from the code repository. They are outstanding!!

I am having an issue with resizing the Vista controls, actually my issue is really just ignorance.

I can change the control size, but I do not know how to change the size of the mouse over highlight box. - the box size changes, but it is clipping the image.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Brad K

Hi Brad,

I'm on vacation this week and out of town. I'll check this out but I would not recommend that you resize the buttons as the icons are not vectorial and you'll lose quite a lot of resolution by doing so. The best thing would be to have a control template for the right size you're looking for and make the controls you want at the propoer size directly.

However, I would have expected all the button states to resize together... I don't know if there's anything I can do about it. I'll keep you posted. (next week? fingers crossed...)

[Francois Normandin]

The Captain has brought to my attention an installation problem with version 1.0.35. In this build, there is one subset of files (readme & license terms) that are installed using a hardcoded path instead of relative to <user.lib>. Since there are no VIs in this subset, no problems occur with multiple versions of LabVIEW installed. However, it causes the following errors:

a) if you run a 32-bit version of Windows, there will be creation of a C:\Program Files (x86)\National Instruments\LabVIEW 8.6\user.lib\_LAVAcr\UI Tools directory. Unless you don't have admin rights to create a dir in C:\ , you will not see any errors and the package will behave as expected. It's just very inconvenient that it creates a whole hierarchy in parallel!

b) if you run a 64-bit version of Windows AND you install the package for LV 2009, you won't find the license and readme files in the proper directory. Not a big concern, except if you don't notice that you should keep the Nuvola Icon license with any program you distribute that uses the Nuvola icons herein.

Norm was actually unlucky enough to be in situation a) with restrictions on directory creation... which is lucky for me I guess. Thanks a ton Norm.

A new version will be uploaded tonight.

AFTER INSTALLATION OF NEW VERSION 1.0.36 or higher, you should:

- delete the "C:\Program Files (x86)\National Instruments\LabVIEW 8.6\user.lib\_LAVAcr\UI Tools" directory IF AND ONLY IF you have your LabVIEW installed in "C:\Program Files\National Instruments\LabVIEW xyz"

- if you run a 64-bit version of Windows, do nothing.

- in case you're unsure, PM me!

Change log notification for upcoming version:

v1.0.36: Correction of the ogp file to remove a hard-coded install path on file subset 3. Relative install path has been programmed instead to install in the correct <user.lib> directory. The issue caused a subset of files (readme and license) to be installed in an unexistant LabVIEW directory (x86).

++++++++

I'll be checking the addons for the same error in the readme/symbols/license file subsets...

[Francois Normandin]

I can change the control size, but I do not know how to change the size of the mouse over highlight box. - the box size changes, but it is clipping the image.

Brad K

Hi Brad,

I've checked this and it seems it's only a loss of resolution. The hover-effect border is actually only 1 pixel large (maybe 2), so the algorithm that executes when you resize must be smoothing/averaging pixels and lose some information in the process. I tested it with GlassWeb style resizing and you don't get it clipped, just a lost of resolution.

Unzip those in your LabVIEW Data\LAVA\Control Templates directory:

Additional Control Templates.zip

(small and medium size templates for Vista style)

[liufeng_sjzri]

let me have a try!

[Francois Normandin]

let me have a try!

Just follow the link at the bottom of the first post to the download section.

[Mads]

I have installed UI Tools 1.1.0.9 under LV2011 and seem to have all the other packages that it depends on installed, but the state machine VIs still seem to be missing. When I start the Control Generator it starts to look in <userlib>:\_LAVACR\UI Tools\_lava_lib_ui_tools.llb for Add State(s) to Queue_jki_lib_state_machine_lava_lib_ui_tools.vi but fails to find it...not surprisingly since that llb does not exist.

I have JKIs state machine (2.0.0-1), but these seems to be renamed copies of some of the VIs in that package. I could manually replace the missing VIs with VIs from the JKI State Machine package, but then I would need to do this again if there is an update to the UI Tools so it would be better if I figured out why the problem occurs. Any idea?

[Francois Normandin]

This seems to be the same problem than UI Tools: Control addon.

I'll check this and post a new version in VIP file format soon. Stay tuned.

New version uploaded with corrected namespacing for the JKI State Machine dependency.

Please report if this doesn't solve the problem.

Note that this package gets installed in the new LAVA palette...

[Mads]

That did the trick, thanks François

[GregSands]

Without being demanding have you thought of creating a "Silver" style expansion pack? How much effort would required in getting that working?

[Francois Normandin]

Without being demanding have you thought of creating a "Silver" style expansion pack? How much effort would required in getting that working?

Unzip this file under the "LabVIEW Data\LAVA\Control Templates" directory and you'll get a Silver-looking template installed.

Silver.zip

Note that this button doesn't resize well, just like the other templates, because it creates a fixed-size image of all button states.

I'll investigate how to programatically change decals, but that's not something you should expect soon. I have too many other things on my mind.

You can also create your own templates and drop them in the same directory as stated above. SImply create three PNGs with the button backgrounds you wish and name them like the templates (templatename_1.png, templatename_2.png, templatename_3.png), then make sure that these pictures are "clipboard-copied" on the templatename.ctl different states. The rest is magic .

edit: You should do the template in the lowest possible version, so that it can be called from whichever version you use...

[GregSands]

The rest is magic .

Magic is not a bad word for it all. Really useful tool, thanks for the silver update.