Tabbed Interfac and creating new windows.

[superslug]

Hello,

I am looking to create a user interface that has a bunch of tabs that can be opened and closed similar to a web browser. I was thinking maybe we could do it using the visibility settings on pages of a tab control and maybe moving tabs posistioning around. Failing that we could simulate tabs with buttons and changing elements of the interface to show a "tab" based on the buttons. I was wondering if anyone had done this sort of thing in labview before and had any tips.

The user of the interface will also be able to send the contents of a tab into a new window that will have just what was on that tab in it. I was thinking it would be cool if they could grab the tab and drag it out of the main window and create a new one, has anyone done this sort of thing before?

thanks

Bernard

[SuperS_5]

Hi,

I have done something kind of similar. We used sub-panels and dynamically called subVIs that are stuck into the sub-panels. This allow for some of the subVIs to be "popped-up" in a new window, after removing it from the sub-panel. However, we used buttons, instead of tabs for the navigation.

I was thinking it would be cool if they could grab the tab and drag it out of the main window and create a new one

That sounds really cool. I hope that you post your progress on this.

EDIT: There was some cool examples in the recent Example Code Contest put on by NI. Specifically the cool UI examples. You may want to check some of them out.

Edited December 1, 2010 by SuperS_5

[superslug]

Hi,

I have done something kind of similar. We used sub-panels and dynamically called subVIs that are stuck into the sub-panels. This allow for some of the subVIs to be "popped-up" in a new window, after removing it from the sub-panel. However, we used buttons, instead of tabs for the navigation.

That sounds really cool. I hope that you post your progress on this.

EDIT: There was some cool examples in the recent Example Code Contest put on by NI. Specifically the cool UI examples. You may want to check some of them out.

That sounds like it will be pretty similar to what we are going for. I have done some work with subpanels and was thinking that I would use them.

When changing "tabs" in the main screen was that a matter of loading new VIs into the subpanel? What was the response time like? The reason I was thinking about a tab was that I thought that response time would be better switching tabs than loading up a new subpanel.

[jgcode]

I am looking to create a user interface that has a bunch of tabs that can be opened and closed similar to a web browser. I was thinking maybe we could do it using the visibility settings on pages of a tab control and maybe moving tabs posistioning around. Failing that we could simulate tabs with buttons and changing elements of the interface to show a "tab" based on the buttons. I was wondering if anyone had done this sort of thing in labview before and had any tips.

Don't forget to check out this tabbed x-control beauty by Olivier Jourdan too.

[SuperS_5]

That sounds like it will be pretty similar to what we are going for. I have done some work with subpanels and was thinking that I would use them.

When changing "tabs" in the main screen was that a matter of loading new VIs into the subpanel? What was the response time like? The reason I was thinking about a tab was that I thought that response time would be better switching tabs than loading up a new subpanel.

Performance was very reasonable, and the response time was fast. This actually worked very nicely for our project.

Don't forget to check out this tabbed x-control beauty by Olivier Jourdan too.

I have not seen this before. Wow!

[superslug]

I have been meaning to get back to report some progress if anyone was interested for a long time but sadly I didn't really get beyond some early stages testing stuff.

I got something basically going though. I can't share the code however The basic idea was that I would track the movement of the mouse within windows using an api call I found via google (I have lost the link sorry but I think it was in the ni.com developer section). I used buttons to represent the "tabs" and as the mouse left the button I opened a re-entrant VI and set the FP.Run-Time Posistion value to be slightly offset from the mouse position so that the mouse was over the title bar and used another api call to make a mouse click which would attach the mouse to the window which would be dropped when the mouse was lifted.

That is as far as I got and I have had to move on so it feels like there are drawbacks that remain unexplored but it is an idea I might go back to in the future, especially with dynamically created controls in LV2010.