Customizable Scrollbar Control

[fabric]

Long, long ago in a LabVIEW version far, far away there was a simple Scrollbar Control that was fully customizable.

Somewhere around LV8.0 (?) it mysteriously vanished, and now when you select a scrollbar from the Modern>Numeric palette, you are given a bog-standard system scrollbar instead.

Now don't get me wrong... I LOVE using system controls and use them whenever possible, but there have been a few times where I have really missed my customizable scrollbar.

• Have you ever tried to use a system scrollbar on a touchscreen?
• Have you ever had a client that wanted their UI painted stylishly black (or red, or whatever), without wanting you to mess with their windows themes?

I recently developed a lovely black XControl scrollbar with properties that mimic the system scrollbar but it was a lot of work, and it still lacks some of the flair of the built in version (like scroll-wheel response, click and drag resizing). Plus, it requires a bunch of extra VIs to be in memory that didn't need to be there before...

Wouldn't you love to see the good old customizable scrollbar reinstated?

[Christina_R]

I did a little research, and I think you're mis-remembering the past. The Scrollbar control was introduced in LabVIEW 8.0, and it has always used the system scrollbar appearance. Before that, people would "fake" scrollbars using slider controls, but there was no "scrollbar" control on the palette. (As an aside, the major limitation of using a slider is the inability to have a page size, both for showing document extent with the thumb size and for advancing by page increments by clicking above/below the thumb).

Don't get me wrong; it's still a reasonable idea to have a customizable scrollbar control. But it's not as easy as "restoring" something that's already implemented. It would be adding functionality to the current scrollbar control.

[Kyle_M]

I think this is a great idea now that touch panels are becoming much more common in things other than just embedded systems. I have supported customers requesting this functionality before, specifically for touch screen applications.

[fabric]

@Christina, thanks for the reply. Yes, it seems that my memory may be showing signs of wear! For some reason I was certain I had edited a scrollbar before... The memory was pretty vivid - I even had a vague recollection of 'losing' the customiz-ability when I upgraded to a newer version of labview. Oh well, perhaps it was a just custom slider control after all...

That said, I think a customizable scrollbar is a great 'new' idea! 

[margasan]

@Christina, actually I am working with a customer that is requesting exactly this, he wants to be able to change the width of the vertical scrollbar as he needs to use it in a project with touch panels in a facility where they have to use gloves. I hope R&D really take this into consideration.

Regards

Mart G

[rvlr]

It seems LabVIEW does have a scrollbar other than the system one.  One place to find it is within modern graphs and charts.  This one can at least be colored however you like.  I think this may be the same scrollbar that the OP is remembering from long ago, as its look matches the scrollbar icons in the numeric pallette.  It would be great to use this scrollbar in other scrolling controls, at least to match color schemes, but I haven't figured out a way to do so.  

[Christina_R]

rvlr - LabVIEW has four built-in styles of scrollbars: System, Classic, Modern and Silver. The controls on the palettes will use different scrollbars, depending on their styles.

However, the (stand-alone) scrollbar control only supports the System style. This Idea Exchange proposal is that it should offer the other styles. 

[Bas.v.E]

We are now 10 years later. With UI's getting more and more important do you think there will be a NXG style scrollbar soon? or a way to customize the scrollbar? When deploying on an RT system, the scrollbar look very ugly.