New option for window modality

[gsussman]

The issue of a modal window being left open during debugging, only to jump to the front when the top level vi is run, has been an issue in LabVIEW for as long as I can remember. I am certian that every developer at one time or another experiences this behavior. There are several work arounds to this issue such as "the old 3 fingered salute" (CTRL+ALT+DEL) and kill LabVIEW, programmatically setting the window modality, external VI task managers, etc... however all of them are workarounds to deal with the issue.

The crux of the problem is that any front panel specified as modal immediately becomes modal as soon as the VI is reserved for execution. This proposal would establish additional option to the VI properties dialog (Modal when Executing). Which would only initiate the modal property of the window when the VI was actually executing.

There have been several similar ideas related to dealing with window modality (see below) however I believe this implementation is different than anything I was able to turn up in a search.

Related topics:

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/VI-Properties-Window-appearance-In-development-mode-po...

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Abort-VI-dialogs-modal-windows/idi-p/983168

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/VI-Task-Manager/idi-p/920067

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/New-quot-Close-all-executing-VI-s-quot-menu-item-in-La...

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Abort-all-VIs-Button-in-Taskbar-Modal-Windows-Problem/...

[tst]

Seems like a reasonable solution. I would also suggest that VIs imported from old versions with the modal option should be set to this new value.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

This sounds like it would be better to just outright change the behavior of "modal". Would such a change cause difficulties in some applications?

[gsussman]

I had originally thought of proposing a change in the default modal behavior as I couldn't come up with a single instance where I might want the current default behavior.

[Darren]

I would support changing the behavior of the existing "Modal" option. I'd be interested to hear what kind of application (if any) that change would adversely affect.

[Intaris]

Big vote from me to change the current implementation.

Any problems it might cause is more than offset by the problems it will solve when actually programming.

[James@Work]

This change is a great idea.

And, this problem with modals during programming is why I always have an EasyVIAborterAuto.vi on my desktop.  No more killing LabVIEW to recover from leaving a modal VI open.

https://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-2309

[fabric]

More virtual kudos for the change!

gsussman (or AQ): Could you raise that as an idea? I almost didn't make it to the comments here as the original idea seemed like a bit of a hacky solution... 

[gsussman]

New idea posted for clarity

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Change-default-behavior-of-Modal-VIs/idi-p/2599479

[Darren]

gsussman, do you want me to close out this idea as a duplicate of the new one? I don't have a way to transfer the kudos...

[gsussman]

The consensus seems to be that changing the current functionality is the correct thing to do.

Go ahead and close this idea and mark it as a duplicate...it's not like it has hundreds of kudos. If the idea has merit, I think the new one will generate enough support on it's own.