LabVIEW IDE Overhaul

Question

1. Allow for "Tabbed Browsing" of VI's to better manage windows.2. Allow for the BD to be open independent of the FP.3. Allow dockable palettes... dock to either the edge of the screen, or to the top bar (pictured below) of LabVIEW.4. As a bonus, consider being able to open PDF's, txt's, and html's in tabs also for Help and documentation.5. Finally, allow the project tree to be docked into the IDE. Please, add your own IDE upgrade ideas in this discussion - illustrations will be especially helpful here. If it's a major enough idea, create a new idea! 

Answer 1

In response to altenbach: 1. The problem of "hiding the titles" for 60 tabs could break down fairly easily. Let's say, when you double click a VI in the docked project it automatically jumps to the tab of the BD of that VI. If there is not a tab, it creates a tab. Now, your "window manager" becomes very clean - a hierchal view of all VI's in the project. Now, you have a list of about 20 text items you can visually scan and choose, rather than a WIN+Tab that you have to scroll through. And when you CTRL+E, it brings up the FP in a SEPARATE window (Ok, completely ditch the "FP in a tab" idea.) Would you propose a more elegant method of scanning through 30 VI's? 2. This is important to remember: Like most integrated, tabbed IDE's, you can resize the relative size of each element. Have a vertical divider that makes the tabs larger and project smaller. Have options that remove the docked palettes from the top of the window. 3. Comparing two small VI's would be easier with the tabbed method! Consider the case structure, and CTRL+Scrolling through the cases. When I want to compare two very similar cases, I CTRL+scroll Up, Down, Up, Down, comparing differences. Take two VI's in adjacent tabs: you could click a tab, then Arrow Left, Right, Left, Right, comparing differences. The overlay method of comparing (think the animated sketch artist, flipping up and down the previous frame in his or her sketchbook) is easier than side-by-side comparisons (remember the "can you find the differences between these two pictures" in your kid's coloring books? Subtle differences are not as readily evident). 4. Copy and pasting between two VI's, I normally do by dragging. In this case, you're right, two side by side windows is better. I suppose we would more heavily rely on CTRL+C and CTRL+V. I would readily accept this standardized concession. 5. The "one size fits all" container could DEFINITELY not apply to a FP (!!!), but there's no reason why it could not suit a BD! By default, all FP's have both vertical and horizontal scrollbars turned on. The size of the container is boundless... but the size of the viewing window is limited to how large you physically make the Windows window... just like today! Just make your environment window as large as your largest VI, and then the smaller VI's will have white space around them (pretty much like my original screenshot... a small BD in a larger window). 6. Although MSWord ditched MDI, Excel didnt'! Why? The nature of the documents open is dramatically different. Are you likely to be jumping around from .doc to .doc? Eh, maybe. How about .xls to .xls? Much more likely. How about from .vi to .vi? WAY more likely!! 7. Font toolbar... money. Pre-Kudos. (Just make it dockable!)  8. MDI for a LV deity? Jail. MDI for mere mortals? Productivity. MDI for NI? Sales. (A little dramatic? Arguable.) To jlokanis: 1. Windows 7 has a MUCH improved taskbar. It provides basically exactly what you are talking about - a window manager with one icon on the taskbar. I will use Windows 7, and it will suffice until LabVIEW offers a tabbed IDE.Message Edited by mechelecengr on 07-27-2009 08:58 PM