Pinned Property Window

[GregSands]

It would be great to have the option of pinning the Property Window so that it stays open over the Front Panel (and Block Diagram?), in a similar way to the palettes.  Selecting a new front-panel control(s) would load the properties for that control(s).   The window would of course need to be non-modal (although top-most), and also apply and save changes immediately, which would probably require being able to Undo (Ctrl-Z) changes from that window.

I'm finding I'm using the property window more and more (it's gaining more useful settings), and this would be a helpful shortcut, which could of course be closed if not wanted.  One issue may be that property windows are, in general, quite slow to load, so speeding this up would help too.

[Briton]

hi

I this this would be a nice idea 🙂

But I don't like the property window much:-(

I think there should be more options and look more like a textbased property window.

Something like this from Access(sorry it's in danish):

regards Bjarne

[TimmTheEnchanter]

I read that you're curious why this idea isn't as popular as some others, so I thought I'd provide my thoughts.  While it's nice to have the properties in a single succinct list, for me it reeks of a text-based development environment. 

Personally, I like LabVIEW to remain graphical as much as possible, as the whole philosophy is to make programming intuitive.  Having a huge list of properties with values written out simply doesn't seem intuitive for a LV developer who hasn't used Visual Studio, for instance.  (I have, so I "get" it, but it doesn't seem to fit the paradigm I think of when I think about LabVIEW).

Hopefully that makes sense.  Somehow the way properties are organized into sub-categories with just a right-click seems to make sense when you're searching for a particular property to edit.  For instance, it helps to see that there's a "control" class with sub-classes that inherit those properties, such as "XY Graph" and "string".  In contrast, if all of these properties were listed in one "flat" listbox, it would tend to lose the flavor of how properties are related in a fashion of classes and inheritences.

Just my thoughts--hope it helps!

[GregSands]

Timm - My original idea was not to show properties as a list, which I agree doesn't really fit the LV environment.  The idea was based on noticing that controls seem to have more and more configuration options in the property dialog, which typically takes 2-4 seconds to load each time (on my machine anyway!).  So I'm really just suggesting that the existing property window could stay open, applying changes to a control immediately, and loading new properties when another control is clicked on.

[Briton]

I know that some would get red bumps on body if LabVIEW get more text based functionality, but why not use the good thing form other laguage.;-)

I don't say that the current way to do it should disapear, but my idea could be an option to turn on.

When I want to make a lot of changes to a control or indicator I hate to use the mouse and have to be so precise with the mouse, especially when I want to change color.

I would also like to have the possibillity to edit more than one control at a time. For instance change color on more than one control a the same time.

[TimmTheEnchanter]

GregS - Sorry!  I got a little mixed up when reading your post, and then seeing the picture Briton posted.  I see what you're saying now, and it makes more sense, but I don't find myself fighting with that window too much.  Still, I'll give you Kudos, because there are some times when I might find it helpful.

Maybe this is why more people haven't given you Kudos--when skimming, they see the picture posted by Briton and assume that's what you're talking about.  Maybe it would help to post a photo with a big red box outlining the "pin down" function on the properties window?

And Briton - I understand why using a properties list could be useful to some users, I'm just not that kind of user.