Create a "Recently Used" Palette

[blawson]

There seem to me to be a couple of choke points in right-click access to VIs and functions.  One is that I frequently need to use the same VI's repeatedly.  Another is that the quite useful "insert" and "replace" context items only offer a few first-tier options: one or two related palettes, or all palettes.  Try to insert a few datalog functions for example, and you have to navigate down 6 levels for each. It's even worse if you have to use "select a VI..." and browse to it. For the worst cases, insert and replace lose their advantage over copy-paste or quick drop.

 I propose a dynamically generated palette consisting of the last several VIs and functions (even controls) that have been dropped.  This is analogous to recent-commands-list functionalities common in CAD packages.

- As a member of the functions palette, the items in it are at or above the level they are in their normal place in the hierarchy.

- Since it's a palette you could pin it and it would be handy for dropping the same node on two different block diagrams

[Spectre_Dave]

You can add items to the Favorites sub Palette.

[blawson]

Right, and that is useful but the real key to this is the idea of an automatically generated list of recent VIs.

Honestly, maintaining the favorites palette is something I never think of doing.  I almost never used pinned palettes (maybe I should) and so I never see the option of adding something to favorites, so I never add anything and it doesn't get used. If it took zero effort, I *might* use it - thus this idea.

[JackDunaway]

Also check out the idea of a Recently Used Connector Pane.

Message Edited by JackDunaway (mechelecengr) on 11-13-2009 06:47 PM

[PaulG.]

This would be a good idea, but just as useful is using the Diagram Disable structure and put frequently used code, utilities, etc. in there.

[Manzolli]

Great idea!!!

I don't think that any suggestions above eliminates the necessity.

It may be sorted as Windows Start Menu, or not by option, which puts in the top the most used ones.

[Terry_ALE]

While teaching a Core 2 class one of the students mentioned this idea and I am glad this has been mentioned.  If Amazon.com is smart enough to know what you bought, LabVIEW should remember what you recently used.  Good idea!

[AristosQueue (NI)]

The recently used palette is an idea we talked about in the past. Turns out to be fairly useless since you don't generally drop multiple copies of the same node -- more people use ctrl+drag for that. What you want is other *related* nodes. That's why we created the shortcut palettes -- if you've already got one item from the palette on your diagram, the shortcut palettes give an easy way to get back to that same palette without having to pin the palettes and take up screen real estate. So now any wire or terminal you popup on shows a shortcut to the palette most related with the data type, and any node you pop up on shows the palette from which that node came. Works for dropping new nodes and for insert and replace.

[blawson]

I think the use case for this is when you're dropping copies of a node on a different block diagram, and both diagrams are not visible or would need to be resized to drag from one to the other.  This happens constantly when I'm developing on my laptop, and instead I wind up switching windows and copy-pasting.

and why wouldn't this be always on the list of shortcut palettes?

[Dragis]

i agree with aristos, i don't think a recently used palette would be all that useful since you normally don't drop the same node twice from the palette. if i drop a node once, i'll copy and paste it the second time. what i do think would be useful is a "most used" palette that would essentially create my "favorites" palette for me. labview could even track several groups of nodes that are my "overall" favorites, my favorites for "this application class", my favorites for "this target", etc.

[Thoric]

I personally would find it quite useful, there have been a number of occasions during past development that I have felt a recently accessed primitive or function, buried down deep in the menu structure, ought to be available in a Recently Used list. This usually comes about when burrowing around in my code, and I come across a second opportunity to place down a function that I'd recently used, which I hadn't at the time thought to copy into the copy buffer. Inevitably, I then have to route it out again (Quickdrop notwithstanding). A Recently Used list doesn't sound like a lot of work to implement, and I think I'd find it useful.