Allow easier manual resizing of Front Panels

[Intaris]

A minor niggle I have is the way LV reacts when we resize windows.  The anchor point is always at the top-left of the window.

If I grab the top of a window and make it smaller, I don't get rid of space at the top of the window as expected but rather at the bottom.  This makes alighning the top of the window a painstaking process of resize, adjust, chack, resize, adjust, check.....  I'd live for LV to anchor at the opposite side of wwhere I'm resizing.  If I want to resize the panel shown below to get rid of the space at the top of the panel I insitinctively grab the upper windo edge and resize.  But alas, the result is not what I expect (Even after 10 years of LV programming). 

 I want to get rid of the space at the top.....

Doh!  Grabbing the top edge doesn't do what I want!

Shane.

Message Edited by Intaris on 01-11-2010 09:40 AM

[altenbach]

The main problem is the fact that the top-right corner has a meaning during runtime and thus needs to be accurately set. This has always been tedious and my old suggestion tries to deal with it in a different way and would make the issue you desribe less of a problem. (Still, it should be fixed).

We do have the two thicker guidelines that by default define the upper left corner. Maybe a way to easily snap the FP position back so that the origin again is located in that corner. (e.g. by double-clicking the small filled crosshair circle on the background)

[CrystalTech]

The idea to make the alignment to the top-right corner easier is a good one, but I agree with Altenbach.  The widows top-right corner is a default that has it's reasons.  The suggestion to have double-clicking a small filled crosshair circle on the background (automatically moving the front panel page close to the top-right) may be an easier fix for NI to achieve, and still achieve your request. 

[CrystalTech]

Oops, I mean top-left!

[RavensFan]

Yes, the top-left corner is important.  But I think the complaint here doesn't just involve trying to resize the window to eliminate dead space at the top and the left.  It also seems like the behavior of the scroll bars when dealing with the window is inconsistent.

When you open a new VI, you have the origin dot right at the upper left.  No scroll bars.  Drop a control on the diagram.  Suddenly scroll bars appear.  Okay, there is some logic as you may want to pan to the left and add controls to the left size of the origin.  But if you scroll right or left, then the scroll bars might suddenly disappear.  Why?  Actually, whether you can scroll right, left, or both seems to depend on where you drop the control on the front panel.

If you resize your window, and go back and forth with the scroll bars, you are just kind of wandering around lost in circles until you are finally able to get your origin back at the upper left corner of the window again.  Things get complicated when controls are added in the block diagram because they might get place way off in left field on the front panel.  You have to move/pan/resize until you find them to get them corralled and brought back to the real working area of your front panel.  In the meantime, the size of the window, the location of the scrollbars, and the position of the origin have all moved around in unpredictable ways.

Altenbach's Idea will help keep problems of dealing with the movements limited to edit time, and allow you to explicitly set the way you want the FP to appear during run-time.  But I am kudoing Intaris' idea because the overall behavior of the FP with respect to the scrollbars, windows size, and origin location in LV currently is very inconsistent and difficult to know exactly what you need to adjust to get the FP to the way you want it to appear.

[Manzolli]

When I need to resize the form, I do it in two teps: first I use <Ctrl> + <Shift> and drag the form to define the position of the controls relative to top and left borders, then I drag the lower right corner of form to resize it.

Would be nice having a way to send the (0,0) coordinates back the original position (top left of the form) moving all controls, keeping the relative position among then.

[tst]

> Would be nice having a way to send the (0,0) coordinates back the original position (top left of the form) moving all controls, keeping the relative position among then

There's a plugin for the JKI RCF that does this.

[Manzolli]

Ok tst, let's make this a new idea!

[cwolfskill]

This problem with resizing from only 2 sides of the window (rather than any of the four) also applies to the block diagram where the argument about having a fixed top left point are mute.  It should be fixed there as well.  Whichever side of the window I am resizing, that is the part of the block diagram (or front panel) that should move/change.  Aka, if i resize from the top, I should see more or less space at the top, same with the left side.