Why would a control have the customize option dimmed out when it is right clicked?

[LabTech]

A numeric control in one of the examples has the customize option dimmed out when right clicked. Why would that be? Is there a way to get it into the control editor or saved as a control?

[altenbach]

Could you tell us which control in which example you are discussing? 😉 What is your LabVIEW version?

[LabTech]

I'm using LabVIEW 7 and the control is in the examples section. It is the numeric control in the select signals vi that is under vi templates.

[altenbach]

Sorry, your description is not sufficient for me.

Can you give the full path name of the example?

[Dennis_Knutson]

He's probably looking at a dialog control. Many of those cannot be customized.

[altenbach]

That was my first guess, but then I did a quick check under LabVIEW 8 and they can in fact be customized, it seems. Thus I abandoned that thought.

Checking with LabVIEW 7.1 now..... Yes, prior to LabVIEW 8.0, it seems that most controls from the dialog palette cannot be customized. 🙂

[LabTech]

Thanks all for the information. It does not look like any of the controls available on the controls pallet. Even if it can't be customized, is there a way to get it saved as a control?

[Dennis_Knutson]

I found the example you are talking about and it is in fact a dialog control. They are on the Dialog Controls palette.

Message Edited by Dennis Knutson on 08-25-2006 12:27 PM

[altenbach]

Just to clarify my earlier statement:

While customization was greyed out prior to LabVIEW 8.0 for items in the dialog (=system) palette, even LabVIEW 8.0+ does not allow much customization. For example if I try to customize the "System Numeric" control, the "wrench" is still greyed out and the only thing I can do is resize the control horizontally in the control editor.

This is as expected!

Dialog (system) controls inherit their visual appearance from the OS, and the same control will look different under Windows XP, Windows 2000, or MAC, etc. They adapt to the desktop theme, including fonts, font colors, and other colors, etc.. The attached Image shows the same pair of controls and how they change appearance if I switch the desktop theme between "Windows XP" and "Windows Classic".

Customization would make no sense, because the appearance is determined by the OS, not by you. 🙂

Message Edited by altenbach on 08-25-2006 02:19 PM

[altenbach]

For completeness, here's another possible scenario where "customize" can be greyed out on ANY control:

The control editor apparently only allows once instance of itself. This means that if you currently have the control editor open to customize one control, you cannot customize any other control until you close the existing control editor first! If you try anyway, the customize option will be greyed out.

Personally, this puzzles me and I wonder why we have this limitation at all. It would be often useful to customize multiple controls at the same time, for example to copy and paste elements between them.

One example that would benefit from allowing multiple control editor windows open is:

http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=170&message.id=129209#M129209

So, why is there a restriction? Is this something that can be relaxed in the future? NI?!