Change front panel default color to a lighter color

[avalim]

Let's change the front panel default color from the traditional darker grey/gray to a lighter and more modern color - see picture B (the lighter grey/gray is the same used in LabVIEW dialogs). This modification would only affect new VIs.

In addition, we should modify the default controls to lighter colors and change the graphics background color from black to white - see picture C. 

A) Default Colors                                                             B) Lighter grey default

  

C) Lighter controls and white graphic background  

[Christina_R]

There's a lot of interesting discussion here, but I just wanted to respond to the idea that LabVIEW VIs should use system colors by default, and that there should be more system controls, like graphs.

One problem with using system colors and controls is that they are not WYSIWYG. Many LabVIEW users would be unpleasantly surprised if they built VIs that looked completely different on another computer (because it was running a different system theme). When people color their tank blue, they expect it be blue, not some symbolic color that might or might not be blue depending on the computer. And there's no way to look at a VI and know which colors are actual colors and which are system colors that might change.

Furthermore, mixing system colors and actual colors can lead to unusable VIs in some cases. For example, if you put black text on the system panel color background, when you run on a computer that changes that system color to black, the text disappears (black on black).

The system controls that LabVIEW provides are the ones defined by the operating systems we run on. Microsoft does not give us a system graph. Windows does not even provide enough system colors that we could reasonably define a system graph (because we would need a set of plot colors that would be guaranteed to be different than the plot area background color in all themes).

Since we can't provide a full set of system-themed LabVIEW controls and we can't encourage mixing of system and non-system colors, we cannot make the default color scheme of VIs use system colors.

The System palette used to be called the Dialog palette, and for good reason. When you're building VIs that are meant to be dialogs, system controls are an excellent choice. But when you're building VIs that are instrumentation panels, system controls are not usually the way to go.

[Darren]

Available in LabVIEW 2011 and later