PDA Tab Control Issues

[jusborne]

Hello,

Sorry for the painfully long post.

I'm developing a PDA application and am having some issues with the tab controls. I'm using LV 8.2 PDA module on Windows mobile 5.0.

My application requires multiple windows accessed from a main menu page. On the main menu page, there are button controls to open each sub page which each contain multiple indicators and controls. Some of the pages need to be password protected which prevents me from  using a traditional tab configuration so I've used a tab control for each individual page.

When a button on the main menu page is pressed and a password is entered correctly, the main menu page tab control visibility property is set to false and the appropriate page visibility property is set to true. This method allows me to switch the visibility of the tab rather than the visibility of each control / indicator located on the tab.

The problems that I have encountered are:

1. When the main menu page is activated, is has transparent areas on the page showing other windows applications below. Usually under a text display.
2. The control / indicator text labels disappear after the tab visibility property is cycled from false to true leaving just the indicators with no text.
3. When the tabs visibility is set to off in the "Visible Items" menu, the tabs disappear when viewing on the desktop but reappear when loaded to the PDA (notice this already posted for LV 7.1 PDA)
4. PDA crashes if there is a tab control in a tab control (sub page) with error "App failed. Error code 70851003, Unable to lock memory chunk".
5. Slider controls / indicators on a tab control do not appear when loaded to the PDA when the containing tab visibility property is cycled from false to true.

Any help would be appreciated. Is there a different method that I could use to achieve the same goal without using tab controls as pages?

Thanks,
John

[tst]

Here are two options -

• Use a different VI for each screen. This might require you to change your architecture somewhat and has potential for performance problems on the PDA, but if they are simple VIs you shouldn't have problems.
• Use a single tab control and hide the tabs (assuming the PDA module will let you do that). Then, use a ring to change the value of the tab control, which is an enum. You can get the value change for the ring and pop up your password VI and if the password was invalid return the ring to its previous value and not change the value of the tab.
  You can also do this with buttons, but they take up more room and the logic for handling them is a bit more complex.
  Also, if the PDA module does not let you hide the tabs, you can try moving the tab control itself so that the tabs are off the screen.

[jusborne]

Hi tst,

The hidden tabs idea worked great.

Thanks for your help,

John.