Here's yet another use for the tab control: Rather than using it as a tab control with tabs, I make the tabs invisible and just use it to control front panel visibilities using the Run-Time Menu. I set up the tabs with common names first(ie Main, Test 1, Test 2, Test N, configuration, Comments), then make all tabs invisible so that the tab control looks like a raised box decoration. This way I can make as many desired tabs without it taking real estate from the front panel. I then create a menu item named "VIEW" and within that menu I list each name of the tabs (Main, Test 1, Test 2, Test N, etc.) as they are labeled on the tab control. I then use the Menu Selection Event to output the item tag string directly to a case that contains the 'value' property node of the tab control with the enum constant matching the case name (Main, Test 1, etc.). This way, I can click on the VIEW menu and select the desired view to make a certain tab page visible. Prior to the tab control included in LabVIEW 6i (If I remember correctly), the code required for this functionality was not so clean and simple. Hope you like it.
Guy Holland Intralase Corp. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 3:23 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Another use for tab indicators For the multitude (2) of you who liked my earlier suggestion for using the tab control instead of stacking invisible controls here's something else I nearly always do. When I begin to code a new application the first thing I do is put a tab control with 3 tabs on the panel, change it to an indicator, and turn off auto-grow (auto-grow has bit me more times than I want to think about.). I label the tabs "visible", "hidden", and "configuration" and size the control slightly larger than the viewed panel will be. Next I drag a bitmap background (favorite is a graduated blue background light in the center and darker at the edges that I made in PowerPoint) onto the "visible" tab, size it to fill the whole viewed area and place all the controls and indicators that the user sees on top of it changing font colors etc to look good with the background. Users really notice an attractive panel. Its worth a bit of extra effort to create a professional appearance. On the block diagram I set the tab to "viewed" when the vi starts. I put all the controls and indicators that nobody sees but me (the developer) on the hidden tab. Most of my Apps allow for some configuration stuff that I save to .ini files (Read Key.vi, Write Key.vi). I put all the controls related to those items on the "configuration" tab and simply switch tabs in my program back and forth between "visible" and "configuration" as needed. Finally I adjust the scrollbar on the panel so that the tabs are just off the top of the viewed area and save the vi. The built application has the scrollbars turned off so the user will never see the tabs yet when I work with the code in the development environment its easy to get at everything. Roy Kniskern, Sr. Product Dev. Engineer MOOG Components Group Inc. 1213 N. Main St. Blacksburg, VA 24060 <http://www.polysci.com/> (Formerly Northrop Grumman Poly-Scientific) mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
