Back and Forward buttons for Case and Event structures

[EldonS]

When you have a lot of cases (or events) in your case (or event) structure it can be tedious to go back and forth between them (yes, Ctrl + Mouse wheel works great but can be hit and miss to get to the right one that is many cases away).  Often times I am in one case, I need to grab/do/look at something in another case and then return to the case I am working on.  It would be nice to have a Back and Forward button (similar to a web browser) so after I can quickly jump back to where I was.  The only way to do it now is to click on the case titles, scroll up/down (which can be very tedious if you have enough cases that it goes off-screen) to switch between.

[JackDunaway]

One way I mitigate this problem is to rearrange the cases/events such the cases I flip back and forth between are contiguous.

If the most logical organization of your cases does not allow for two cases to be side by side that you often flip through, temporarily rearrange them to be side by side. Once satisfied with the code in the two (or more) cases, reorder them into the original order.

I can't say how many times I have tried to CTRL+Scroll through webpages (only to have it zoom in and out on the browser!!!). To me, this is WAY more natural than using the Back and Forward buttons, and it would be more laborious to try to hit an 8x8 pixel  < > arrow.

Now, my assumptions! I am using a mouse with a scroll wheel at my desk, and I am using a laptop touchpad when hunched over in the dirt and the heat while in the field. At the desk, CTRL+Scroll is king, hands down. In the field, the <> idea is more legit, but not much more useful than the current pull-down selector.

[tst]

Just to make it clear - my understanding of the idea was that we would use keys on the keyboard to do this navigation, since LabVIEW already has these buttons on the screen, on each side of the selection ring. The real question would be how these would be associated with a specific multi-frame structure. I would say it could probably be the structure the mouse is currently over or the one last clicked in.

[EldonS]

Let me restate the need.  Yes Ctrl-Mouse Wheel and the arrows that are already there move between cases, but only to the immediate next (or previous one).  If I have 50 cases in one structure and I add a 51st one, let's say I need to go back to case #8 grab some stuff (put it in case #51) then go to #15 grab something else, (paste it in #51), etc. etc.  I currently have to scroll with my mouse wheel a bunch both directions (or click and select (and if there are fifty cases there is a chance that they are off screen and I have to wait for LabVIEW to scroll down)). What would be nice is to create case #51, go to #8 grab what I need, hit "Back" (it jumps to 51) and paste it, go to #15 grab what I need, hit "Back" (it jumps to 51) and paste it, etc. 

Another related but separate frustration that I have is that if you are on case 51 and (let’s say) your screen only shows 40, when you click on the case title (to show all your cases), it displays all the cases from case #1 rather than displaying where you are at.  For those of us heavy into state machines (queue, numeric, etc) this is very frustrating behavior.

Message Edited by EldonS on 08-17-2009 04:13 PM

[tst]

Now I see I didn't understand the original idea. I doubt this is something I would really need.

One thing that might help you is one of the plugins which was written for the JKI right-click framework which displays a dialog which shows the states of the SM as an organized tree and allows you to navigate them like that. I assume it only works with the JKI SM, but I haven't tried it myself.

[tst]

The case selector plugin is here.

[Darren]

Any idea that has received less than 9 kudos within 9 years after posting will be automatically declined.