Worst LabVIEW design feature

[mje]

This is one of my pet peeves too. Along with the amount of coding that must be done just to make a UI work. Most projects I find nowadays are about 60% UI code and 40% real-stuff. The UI hasn't really changed much since the MAC original (in look and feel). No matter what you do. It always "looks" like LabVIEW. I think we would see many "new" looks if NI gave us access to the controls canvas and "onPaint" event..

I'd put that percentage even heavier on the UI side. I honestly can't quantify the effort I put into writing obscure hierarchies of VIs to deal with the oddities features of the LabVIEW controls in an effort to make the UI behave at least somewhat consistent with anything else the user interacts with elsewhere. For anything other than the basic scalar controls, I find it takes all of a few seconds for a user to realize they're not dealing with a "normal" control. Don't get me going on trees or multi-column list boxes...

I develop 100% Windows platform locked applications, and I swear, next time my UI is going to be 100% .NET or WPF based controls, except for the graph objects. The graphs I think are the strongest UI components NI has, and even they are showing their age.

[Christian_L]

...although I'm not sure I'm happy about being called an "old timer" Seriously though, when it first was released, I resisted, but after forcing myself to use it I wouldn't go back.

After reading this from Chris, I guess I'll now have to spend the time to use and love the Auto-Tool myself. Maybe I need to get a better mouse to be able to position the cursor more precisely.

Yes, I am an old timer, though to be honest my first year at NI I resisted learning LabVIEW at all, having started as a LabWindows/DOS and then CVI guy.

I always (jokingly) tell the guys in my group, that if a feature didn't exist in LV5, I likely do not use it.

[ShaunR]

I'd put that percentage even heavier on the UI side. I honestly can't quantify the effort I put into writing obscure hierarchies of VIs to deal with the oddities features of the LabVIEW controls in an effort to make the UI behave at least somewhat consistent with anything else the user interacts with elsewhere. For anything other than the basic scalar controls, I find it takes all of a few seconds for a user to realize they're not dealing with a "normal" control. Don't get me going on trees or multi-column list boxes...

I develop 100% Windows platform locked applications, and I swear, next time my UI is going to be 100% .NET or WPF based controls, except for the graph objects. The graphs I think are the strongest UI components NI has, and even they are showing their age.

I'm 100% with you here...ESPECIALLY the tree view..... - and my UI are "simple" (or they would/should be...lol). I went through a stage of writing front ends in another language and have only the backend IO and stuff in LV. I didn't find many downsides to this apart from my abhorrence to mixing languages. In fact I might play with it again but using TCPIP as the glue rather than DLL calls. Oooh. Epiphany This would mean the UI doesn't even have to be on the same machine

[Michael Aivaliotis]

I hate, hate hate hate the new probe windows....

The new Icon editor is next on the list.

[Phillip Brooks]

XControls for modifying the dev environment?

Maybe you should look at Express VIs

[Michael Aivaliotis]

I hate, hate hate hate the new probe windows....

The new Icon editor is next on the list.

I'd like to add a bit more to this so I don't sound harsh. I like the idea of overhauling the probes and the icon editor. It's a step in the right direction. They just both need improvements to make them really useful for me and not get in the way of my workflow. They're not there yet.

[ShaunR]

I'd like to add a bit more to this so I don't sound harsh. I like the idea of overhauling the probes and the icon editor. It's a step in the right direction. They just both need improvements to make them really useful for me and not get in the way of my workflow. They're not there yet.

Nope. I think you were right the first time. I no longer use the probe window preferring to slap indicators all over the place

[Daklu]

I develop 100% Windows platform locked applications, and I swear, next time my UI is going to be 100% .NET or WPF based controls

Here's some grist for the rumor mill...

Somewhere along the line, possibly when installing LV10, I saw a reference to Microsoft Silverlight. It might have been a EULA. I didn't think too much about it at the time, but at our local user group meeting last week the sales rep mentioned R&D is working on some sort of Silverlight integration for a future Labview release. I'm sure it's at least a couple versions down the road, but it's nice to hear NI is trying to address the UI problems.

[jgcode]

I don't know about the future of LabVIEW but Silverlight is currently used in MAX and also for configuration of targets via the new web interface. Additionally it is used for the Web Builder UI.

[mje]

Most likely it's as jg mentioned, for the Web Builder UI. Which looks pretty slick I might add.

I'd welcome an overhaul of the UI components, but when they do do it, I'd expect it to still be cross-platform owing to NI's long history of doing as much. This is part of the reason I'm not holding my breath for a set of native feeling controls.

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

I don't know about the future of LabVIEW but Silverlight is currently used in MAX and also for configuration of targets via the new web interface. Additionally it is used for the Web Builder UI.

And it's a long way to be anything but Windows only. I know of Moonlight but sorry guys that is not cutting it yet for use in an application like LabVIEW on non-windows platforms. Even Mono is still lacking quite a few things to be a true .Net replacement.

[Daryl]

I'm some kind of freak of nature, I like both the auto tool and the new probe window

[Ernest Galbrun]

The marketing.

It's tiring having to continually defend LV (and therefore my budgets) as a "real" language.

I'm aware that I answer a 1+ year old message, but I totally agree with that.

I have basically learned programming with labVIEW, so I didn't know what a non-programming langage was (I also did quite a bit of c++, which is also a programming language). And back in 2008 I spoke with a PR guy from NI that told me labVIEW was kind of like Matlab. So when people asked me to write them nice programs in Matlab a couple years ago, I joyfuly accepted. That was when I understood what "not a programming language" is. In the end, the situation of LabVIEW is very odd : people who use it think it is not a programming langugage because they don't know what a programming language is ; and people who know also think it's not because NI told them so. Anyway, I know and at least I can thus feel vastly superior to the majority of other humans being, that's one positive point.

[crelf]

...at least I can thus feel vastly superior to the majority of other humans being, that's one positive point.

Spoken like a true programmer!

[shoneill]

Stupid programmers.

 

Or NI Marketing, it's kind of the same thing. 

Edited March 21, 2013 by shoneill

[Gribo]

The icons. 32x32 pixels on the block diagram? 

[hooovahh]

The icons. 32x32 pixels on the block diagram? 

I agree but there has to be a limit right?  When LabVIEW was first developed maybe 32x32 was a good size.  Maybe they didn't have very complex sub VIs needing a bunch of inputs and outputs.  

 

If you do want another way to view a subVI you can right click it and choose to un-check View as Icon.  Then you can resize the subVI (dragging down) and your terminals will be displayed in a larger manner.

[Neil Pate]

Having the Status visuals as a tick or a cross but represented by a boolean. After 17 years of LabVIEW development I still make mistakes when using the error Status boolean and forget that a True means "Error Present".

 

[Gribo]

SaaS.

[hooovahh]

2 hours ago, Gribo said:

SaaS.

I'd like to change my vote.

[Gribo]

You can have as many votes as you want.

[Gribo]

No search option in the .NET assembly selection windows. 

[dadreamer]

I got used to almost everything in modern LabVIEW, but these two are driving me nuts.

- "new styled" bright white splash screen and GSW (Getting Started Window) (since LV 2021 and up);

- online help in LabVIEW 2022 Q3 (and probably up?).

[ShaunR]

4 hours ago, dadreamer said:

I got used to almost everything in modern LabVIEW, but these two are driving me nuts.

- "new styled" bright white splash screen and GSW (Getting Started Window) (since LV 2021 and up);

- online help in LabVIEW 2022 Q3 (and probably up?).

You used to be able to modify the GSW but in later versions they put it in a packed lib.

The probe window is still my #1 focus of hate. The fact you can't resize string controls in it makes it dead to me

[dadreamer]

12 hours ago, ShaunR said:

You used to be able to modify the GSW but in later versions they put it in a packed lib.

Tried that. 2009 is the latest version where the GSW has not been packed yet (lvlib). I have slightly reworked that window to satisfy my preferences (dark mode etc.) and used it for 2020 and 2021 versions. But in 2022 Q3 something has changed in the underlying C code, that's supporting the behaviour of the GSW and due to that my modded GSW stopped working normally. I've applied few workarounds but still there are some quirks. Besides that '09 GSW is too ascetic, maybe I could remake it more extensively, but I decided to leave it as is.