Cancel load for Quick Drop, Palette Search, etc

[David_L]

Situation:

You want to show a coworker or customer something "real quick" in the LabVIEW.  So you open a new VI, open the block diagram, and open the quick drop accidentally because you thought the palettes were already loaded.  

DANGIT you forgot that you haven't accessed the palettes since you started LabVIEW.  Now you have to resort to awkward conversation defending LabVIEW about how awesome it is, even though it can sometimes be slow, etc, etc.  If you decide to skip the awkward conversation and instead try clicking out of the window you see this awful image:

Oh No! Did LabVIEW crash?  Is it broken?  How long will this take?

Solution:

Cancel button on the windows in question that allows you to stop loading the palettes (or switch it to loading in the background) so that you can go back to work and find your function the old fashion way.  Save you time.  Save you annoyance.  Save LabVIEW some street cred.

The world is a happier place...

[David_L]

PS.  Darren suggested about a year ago to simply eliminate the delay all together.  While this is a much better long term plan, my idea at least helps fill the gap if his idea is not possible.   

[SteveChandler]

I thought a little bit about this before giving a kudo. My first thought was "this is not a problem since I have LabVIEW configured to load pallettes on launch so I never see the delay" But then I thought some more. Any long operation should have the ability to be canceled. The LabVIEW courses all stress that the UI should be responsive to the user. The CLD example exams all have the requirement that the UI should respond to quit in <100mS.

So kudos even though you already can eliminate the delay.

[தமிழ்நேரம்]

Or Make the load palette during launch as the default option for the fresh LabVIEW installation.

[GregFreeman]

This happened to me twice today. On my pc it loads at startup but often I'm on a customer's pc showing them something and hit ctrl + space. Uh oh were stuck. I have learned to just wait and it loads eventually. But the not responding is always fairly heart stopping no matter if you know it will clear up itself or not. But, I have to say why worry about a cancel button? If a cancel is possible I'm assuming the button will trigger an event. So, just use the x and handle a panel close event.

[David_L]

Good call.  The X is already there and looks like its functional, might as well make it functional to boot.

[Darren]

Unfortunately, I can't implement a fix for this issue (as much as I would like to!).  When Quick Drop is "Populating list", it is actually blocking at a property node call that is retrieving all of the object names.  So a fix for this issue would involve changing the way Quick Drop gets its object list.

-D

[David_L]

Well that's depressing... So much for that one.

[Darin.K]

Don't feel so bad, apparently that wait is necessary.  Once every other blue moon something may have changed in your palettes, and it is extremely important that you not miss that change in your initial use of Quick Drop. 

As I mention every time this issue is raised, it really annoys me since I have never "dropped" anything from QD, it is just a vehicle for shortcuts.  Maybe someday QD can become like the Icon Editor where we can write a drop-in replacement if we are so inclined.

I say that for the Coding Challenge during NI week that you must start from a fresh install, so while everyone is watching Darren hits Ctrl-Space followed by waiting, waiting, waiting. 

It is time to put the "Quick" back in Quick Drop!

[Darren]

I'm fairly certain that nobody on this planet wishes as much as I do for Quick Drop to launch quickly.  😉  That's why I posted the other idea in the first place...ideally, Quick Drop would launch instantaneously every time, which would preclude the need for a cancel button at all.

-D

[tst]

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@Darin.K wrote:

Maybe someday QD can become like the Icon Editor where we can write a drop-in replacement if we are so inclined.

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It already is, you can and I have (hint: <LV>\Resource\Plugins). I would have to warn you against caching the list of objects externally, though. My original version (which predated the release of QD, worked in LV 7.0 and can be found here) did this and it was a huge headache for keeping the list correct and up to date. My current version just uses the same method QD uses to get the list, but also has some additional features which wise people consider to be improvements over QD and NI does not ;). That one can't be released, as it contains code which isn't mine, but you can see the basic improvements in the version that's on LAVA.