Taming LabVIEW's many floating windows in the dev environment, or how to put context help in jail, kind of

[ChrisLudwig]

This might just be a nirvana solution for LabVIEW devs.  I installed "Actual Window Manager" ($50 shareware with a 60 day trial period) and set up a 1920x1080 panel in the upper right corner of my 2560x1440 monitor.  I dock all front panels and block diagrams in there when I create or first open them.  That gives me a nice 1920x1080 shaped dev area for making GUIs.  There is a panel on the left of the monitor for the other bane of a LabVIEW developer's life, the project explorer.  The lower 360 pixels below the 1920x1080 panel is dedicated to context help and various open file explorer windows. 

Thought this was nirvana...

The Project explorer is happy living in its little jail.  Not quite so with Context Help.  It kept breaking out of jail.  Just put it back in its jail and click the tiny lock icon at the bottom.  It will now mostly stay in jail, but there are a few user actions that will auto-unlock it without asking you for your opinion, because no code is perfect I guess, especially the Clippy-era Context Help Window that should have been fixed when MS killed the Clippy.

Hope you guys like this potential solution.  I'll post back again after a week and let you know how I do with that 'floating in front of whatever you need' Context Help window.

[altenbach]

I would always pick freedom over any kind of jail. 😄

(Hate MDIs and similar environments)

[ChrisLudwig]

Well that was limited success...

My trick is really nice for keeping the project explorer in one place and not hiding it behind anything.  Not so for Clippy Help.

Clicking the lock will pretty much lock it in the tile, but then it never changes the displayed help topic.  So that is what the lock is meant to do...  Without the lock, it can't help walking itself all over the screen.

I get the dislike for Windows MDIs.  Windows just isn't designed to have the desktop modified.  Attempts to do so are usually buggy.

[RTSLVU]

I guess if you work that way it's great.

But I find myself either working in the block diagram or working on the panel.

I never need to see the other while I am working on one.

As for the project explorer, I only need it to open the top level VI, sub-vi, or build executables, so I don't need to see that at all while I am working and usually just minimize it.

[ChrisLudwig]

Same, I only need to see the block diagram or the front panel, not both.  I do find that I am constantly going back and forth to the project explorer from the VI I am editing, but that is mostly because I am working on Panel Actor projects where you are constantly grabbing messages from the project explorer to drop into the current block diagram.  Lots more to do in the project explorer on LVOOP and AF.

[Jacobson-ni]

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@ChrisLudwig wrote:

Same, I only need to see the block diagram or the front panel, not both.  I do find that I am constantly going back and forth to the project explorer from the VI I am editing, but that is mostly because I am working on Panel Actor projects where you are constantly grabbing messages from the project explorer to drop into the current block diagram.  Lots more to do in the project explorer on LVOOP and AF.

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If you didn't already know, Ctrl+Shift+E brings up the project explorer. Also, with the MGI class method browser you can click on a class and get a window of all messages you can send to that actor which can be helpful.

[JÞB]

There was an old option to "Jailbreak " the help window.

I think that it went away when multiple monitors became vogue.  Check into that "fix"