One of the nice feature of the help window in LabVIEW is that when mousing over a node the help window does size itself (to some extend) to display the help/description associated with that particular node.
This is a great feature but there is a specific situation where this is annoying. For instance when you are in the process of wiring a node, depending on the source node help/description the help window may suddenly resize itself to cover your sink (target) node.
In that situation you have to either hide the help window (CTRL+H) or move your VI far enough and rewire (see video below).
What I am proposing is to auto hide (or make the help window semi transparent) the help widow when a wire is being lay down and the user get behind the help widow. As soon as the wiring is done the window can be restored to its previous state.
I think the ability to adjust the transparency of the help window would be most useful (say: transparent/ 10% transparent [usually enough to see through a window]/invisible alternating after each Ctrl-H). Also, if transparency is set to non zero, clicking into the window should result in a "click through".
I was about to post a suggestion that the help window should move to an opposite corner of the screen (maybe I still will). But I like your suggestion of transparency just as well.
I have another application with floating pallettes. When an item is selected and placed near the pallette, the entire pallette fades to completely transparent. The LabVIEW help should do the same as you suggest.
Michael Munroe, CLD, CTD, MCP Automate 1M+ VI Search, Sort and Edit operations with Property Inspector 5.0, now with a new Interactive Window Manager! Now supports full project automation using one-click custom macros or CLI.
