Icon Style - Always 32x32 or Custom?

[Nathan_S]

I've been re-reading through my Core 3 book, and I've run across an apparent contradiction.  I was hoping I could get some input from some experienced programmers about their practices or what they've seen through the years.

Page 5-7 of the Core 3 book says "Always create standard size (32 x 32 pixels) icons."  And then the bullet point goes on to say that other sizes are awkward or might look strange. 

Page 5-8 says "You can also create non-square icons that are similar to the built-in LabVIEW functions."  And apparently there is a LabVIEW Help files for building custom icons.  These icons would NOT be 32x32.

Which is it?  32x32 or custom?  I can't seem to see which is right in this instance...  Any help is appreciated.

[johnsold]

Nathan,

Good question.

And, as is often the case, the answer is ... "it depends."

Most of the time staying with the standard 32x32 icon is the best choice. In fact more than 99% of my VIs not only are that size but also have the 4-2-2-4 connector pane pattern. The only times I deviate from that are when I have a specific reason to do so.

I have attached a small VI which returns the last element from an array.  The code is quite simple and straightforward. When I developed this I needed several copies to extract data from several arrays.  This was more than 10 years ago and screen space was quite limited. So I created a VI with a low profile icon ~8x32.  I can think of one or two other cases where I have used undersized icons, but it has been rare.

Lynn

[Nathan_S]

That's kind of what I figured, use custom with discretion.  Thanks for the input.  Anyone else run across the need for custom icons?

[johnsold]

I think there was a thread in the Breakpoint Board a while back where several people posted some crazy things done with small icons, like making wires disappear!

Lynn

[crossrulz]

For a large majority of my VIs, I use the full icon (also with the 4-2-2-4 connector pane).  I like having smaller icons for VIs where I'm just manipulating the error cluster or something like that just so I don't have to wire around the subVI (for things like references, file paths, etc).  On the other hand, I have a senior engineer who loves having single line icons.  I hate that for the simple reason that I have trouble figuring out what the subVIs do purely from the icon.

[Nathan_S]

I agree.  That was one of my concerns with odd-shaped icons - the icon itself may not describe what it does well.