LabVIEW
RT FIFO documentation is difficult to find
Hi,
While wanting to explain RT FIFOs to someone else, I wanted to point him to some useful pages, but never struggled so much in the search of NI documentation:
1. Typing "labview RT FIFOs" in Google mostly gives broken links:
2. Typing "RT FIFO" in the NI search bar mostly gives broken links or NXG documentation, which should obviously not be here anymore:
3. The only way I found was to open my LabVIEW (2023), create a new VI, drop an RT FIFO node, and from here I could finally have some useful information… which still uses the old help format:
…while other functions (such as Index Array) now use the new help format:
This adds to the list of complaints about NI documentation already discussed in this thread (e.g. lots of broken links, less qualitative content, poor migration of existing content, terrible layout, slow loading, loading with wrong language, …).
My question is:
How much time to wait before NI fixes its documentation, so that it works correctly like before the "migration" ?
Regards,
Raphaël.
It seems broken links were fixed, but the pages are still painfully slow to load.
Also, here is a visual comparative with the old format:
chm help:
web help:
In the web format:
- Some fonts hurt my eyes;
- I am not sure about the grey background, has it been thought of in terms of UX?
- Bullet points are redundant with the terminal icons;
- Indentations are a mess. Hierarchy in the information is not clearly identifiable;
- Too much space, the same content holds in a single screen in the old format, and takes almost 2 screens in the new format;
- Spacing must be normalized across the entire documentation (between lines, sections, subsections...);
- Missing "Details" section title;
- Missing useful buttons such as "Add to the block diagram", "Find on the palette", "Open example", "Find related examples";
- Providing a path to the example at the end is not enough, I want a clickable link that opens the project in LabVIEW directly!
- Clickable links to other pages do not stand out at all. They should have a distinct enough color and/or be underlined;
- Navigation pane on the left should be more compact, and I am not sure about dynamic/smooth animations. Again, does it have a real gain in terms of UX? Wouldn't instantaneous expand/collapse be more efficient?
There may be some good info in NI LabVIEW for CompactRIO Developer’s Guide.
https://www.ni.com/en/shop/compactrio/compactrio-developers-guide.html
Haha just kidding, it's blocked. This really is comically bad.
