About mechanism

[dthomson]

I just tried building an App in 8.0 and using the built-in About mechanism. The only way I could get it to work was (not surprisingly) to use the Application Item/Help/About LabVIEW... menu item. When you use an Application Item, you can't edit the name. So my built application, with it's own name, has an About menu item that says "About LabVIEW...". How useful is that?

It was trivial to add a custom About item and use it to call the same sub-vi that I had created for the built-in mechanism.

My question is: is this sub-optimal? Should NI change this behaviour so that it might be useful for built applications?

Cheers,

Dave

[Ton Plomp]

Hi Dave,

I don't really understand what your problem is but I think it bothers you that in a build program the 'about' menu is about LabVIEW and not your program?

This is a trick you can use to always use the same about window. If you use a 'about.vi' in your build (dynamically loaded) the builder will couple the 'about...' menu with this VI link (a bit old bit it should work)

Ton

[dthomson]

Sorry if I wasn't clear. The mechanism you point to is the one I'm using. It works. The problem is merely that, at least in 8.0, the menu item name is "About LabVIEW...". My own About window is the one that pops up, not the one for LabVIEW. That part is fine. But if this mechanism is used, one cannot change the menu item so that it appears as "About MyApp". It always says "About LabVIEW...". My end users don't need to know that I used LabVIEW to program the app. Most likely they have never heard of LabVIEW. So to make this mechanism useful, one needs to be able to edit the menu item name.

I'm hoping I'm just missing something. If my understanding is correct, perhaps this should go to NI as a suggestion or even a bug report. ?

Regards,

Dave

[Jim Kring]

I just tried building an App in 8.0 and using the built-in About mechanism. The only way I could get it to work was (not surprisingly) to use the Application Item/Help/About LabVIEW... menu item. When you use an Application Item, you can't edit the name. So my built application, with it's own name, has an About menu item that says "About LabVIEW...". How useful is that?

It was trivial to add a custom About item and use it to call the same sub-vi that I had created for the built-in mechanism.

My question is: is this sub-optimal? Should NI change this behaviour so that it might be useful for built applications?

Cheers,

Dave

Stick your about dialog VI here:

<yourapp>\resource\plugins\lv_about.vi

[dthomson]

Jim,

Thanks, I haven't seen that trick before.

Question though: What triggers the dialog in this case. My assumption is that you still have to use the Application menu item, not a custom item. If that is true, then the menu item will still be labeled "About LabVIEW...", not "About MyApp...".

Dave

[Jim Kring]

Jim,

Thanks, I haven't seen that trick before.

Question though: What triggers the dialog in this case. My assumption is that you still have to use the Application menu item, not a custom item. If that is true, then the menu item will still be labeled "About LabVIEW...", not "About MyApp...".

Dave

Create the Help About menu dynamically. I just tested this and it works :-)

Download File:post-17-1157064027.vi

[Yair]

... It always says "About LabVIEW...". My end users don't need to know that I used LabVIEW to program the app. Most likely they have never heard of LabVIEW...

Note that while the menu item doesn't need to be called "About LabVIEW", the license agreement for LV does require you to enter some text into your application's about dialog which says that you used LV to create it.