Request for user feedback: Just-In-Time Advice

[BruceAmmons]

Well, you asked for our opinions.  Here is another of the same.

JIT is annoying, just like MS Clippy.  It is on the list of things that I disable immediately on any new LV install.  Other things on the list are auto routing, auto wiring, abridged menus, Express palettes, auto grow. and terminal icons.  These are all newer features that I find annoying.

Bruce

[Lavezza]

I wanted to add another comment. I agree with the previous post about all the new features that just seem to get in the way of anyone who started with versions before LV7. However, I have seen new users use these things well. Like I said earlier, I try not to change settings when using someone elses computer. But I just can't work with the auto-tool selection. My left thumb and little finger start hitting the tab and space bar without me thinking about it. So I get calls after I leave complaining that I did something and now LabVIEW is stuck and won't change tools when they hover over things. 🙂

What if you could set user profiles and put it as a main menu item, right under Tools. LabVIEW will always start with whatever profile the user has selected as default. But when I come to their computer to do some work, I immediately go to Tools-Select Profile... and pick "LabVIEW 6 Style", or if I've been there before maybe I've already created a "Pat's Profile". On my computer I would have "Pat's Profile" set as the default so I would only mess with it if I needed to reinstall. On other computers I would use the NI supplied "LabVIEW 6 Style" or create a "Pat's Profile" if I think it is worth the effort. The profile should include everything the in Options dialog plus palette setups.

Pat

[Khalid]

I find it annoying (too!).  I don't like the premise that the user is _always_ in need of help. 

Offering some help "in the face" has always annoyed me (MS Clippy, for instance).  May be there is a psychological explanation to it.  But one of the reasons could be that I am usually so absorbed in my wiring that the sudden pop-up is a big distraction.  It stops the train of thoughts.

-Khalid

[Soroush]

Here is another "annoying" vote,

If NI places a checkbox in all JIT messages like this:

Don't ever show Just-In-Time advice dialog

the problem will be completely solved (as I think). I know it can be disabled by adjusting options, but at the moment of its appearance while you intend to do something at that vital moment you must have a killer tool at hand. 

Don't eliminate it. after all it is a LV feature and having a feature is better than having nothing! (if it is customizable!)

[SULLutions]

Another LabVIEWer who thinks JIT is nearly as annoying as Clippy. I really like Pat Lavezza's suggestions, as well as Scott's and Michael's.

[Albert.Geven]

I also have thrown it from the options settings, but maybe it helps when in something like the changed in LV7 you could find a list of tips on how to use new LabVIEW features.

When I'm stressing some problem I don't want advice, but when I'm in learning mood I would use a tips and tricks listings

[LakeLogic]

My 2-cents: Make the Just-in-time dialogs a menu bar toggle item. Same with the auto-tool selection mode. I want to be able to flip them on and off without having to edit the INI file, which leaves a perminent change on someone else's computer.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

Your post in particular caught my attention, though its a sentiment expressed by many.

Let me highlight one particular JIT... in LV7.0, we added two new VI Server methods for VI Refnums: Open FP and Close FP. Prior to 7.0, you would tell a VI to close its panel or open its panel by using the property FP.Open, and pass True or False to the property. What we found was a lot of ambiguous cases. If a window is minimized and you pass TRUE to the property, should that restore it? What if the window is a hidden floater (yes it is "open" in the sense that it is in memory and registered with the OS, but it isn't visible)? The two new methods and the new property FP.State were designed to resolve these ambiguities. But we couldn't remove the old FP.Open property. Too many existing VIs relied upon it. For another, a lot of existing customers would want to continue using the FP.Open property, at least in the short term while they were learning LV7.0. But we wanted to forestall further bug reports about the FP.Open property and guide people to the new methods. So we added a JIT that appears when you set a property node to FP.Open telling you about the new methods.

My point here is the phrase "leave me alone and let me get my work done" -- the attempt here is to steer an existing customer into something that lets them do their work better. Would it be better for us to have simply removed the FP.Open property and forced upgrade customers to go hunting for something they knew about?  Or should we have made it a compiler error to drop a new instance of these nodes [if they were dropped in 6.1 and migrated up, we could mark them as such and not break the VIs]. A lot of options were discussed, and the JIT seemed like the best way to inform without stopping you from doing your work currently.  You can kill it, but it is now flagged in your mind that this isn't the best way anymore. Or that's the theory anyway.

So:
A) Is it just a fundamentally bad idea to try and provide information at the point where it might be useful? Should we just stick with the upgrade notes?
B) If this is a good basic idea, what's a better way, within LV, to do it other than JIT?

For reference, LV7.0 only had 10 JIT dialogs in the entire product.  LV 7.1 had 12. I'm expecting this number to go down again in future releases [and, depending on the feedback in this forum, maybe significantly down. 🙂 ]

[altenbach]

Stephen,

I never disable JIT and I rarely see any (except for the custom probe one). They don't bother me and they were somewhat helpful the first time they appeared.  (Yes, I even left clippy active in MS office!).

It could be made less obnoxious. How about this:

In the upper right corner of the toolbar, we have a "?" button to show the context help. Whenever a JIT is triggered, a similar button next to it with a "!" on it should start flashing gently. Clicking that button will show the JIT advice. After a few minutes or e.g. after 10 edit actions the button will stop flashing.

Clicking on that button if it is not flashing should give a popup with a list of all JIT titles that then can be inspected by clicking.

For symmetry, each JIT dialog should have a button to "show list of all JIT" which would allow to go back to the list.

[MichaelAivaliotis]

---

@Aristos Queue wrote:
Let me highlight one particular JIT... in LV7.0, we added two new VI Server methods for VI Refnums: Open FP and Close FP. Prior to 7.0, you would tell a VI to close its panel or open its panel by using the property FP.Open, and pass True or False to the property. What we found was a lot of ambiguous cases. If a window is minimized and you pass TRUE to the property, should that restore it? What if the window is a hidden floater (yes it is "open" in the sense that it is in memory and registered with the OS, but it isn't visible)? The two new methods and the new property FP.State were designed to resolve these ambiguities. But we couldn't remove the old FP.Open property. Too many existing VIs relied upon it. For another, a lot of existing customers would want to continue using the FP.Open property, at least in the short term while they were learning LV7.0. But we wanted to forestall further bug reports about the FP.Open property and guide people to the new methods. So we added a JIT that appears when you set a property node to FP.Open telling you about the new methods.

---

In this particular case, it might be more usefull to flag the usage of the depricated property by breaking the VI when you try and place it on the diagram. For cases where it's already used perhaps a bright red halo around the object would flag it as something to look at that needs upgrading. What happens to those, like me, who turn off the JIT advice dialogs?