Venting: If the help function opens a page in a browser, load times need to be a tenth of what they are now.

[Florian.Ludwig]

We have just switched from LV 2021 to 2024, and now some nodes have their detailed help in the web instead of the integrated help functionality.

Watching a blank page for 20s is a dismal user experience for a feature that has replaced a perfectly functional solution.

[raphschru]

Hi Florian,

You are right, the online help as it is now is quite useless for everyday coding.

Here is a way to make LV open the offline help instead:

https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Offline-Help-window-in-LabVIEW-2022/m-p/4251163#M1236962

For me it takes "only" 5s to open a help page when the NI Offline Help Viewer is closed, and 3s to refresh the page when it is already open.

It is still a bit long for an offline help, but way faster than the online one.

Regards,

Raphaël.

[JÞB]

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@raphschru wrote:

Hi Florian,

You are right, the online help as it is now is quite useless for everyday coding.

Here is a way to make LV open the offline help instead:

https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Offline-Help-window-in-LabVIEW-2022/m-p/4251163#M1236962

For me it takes "only" 5s to open a help page when the NI Offline Help Viewer is closed, and 3s to refresh the page when it is already open.

It is still a bit long for an offline help, but way faster than the online one.

Regards,

Raphaël.

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As far as I know,  NOBODY has ever been happy about the load time for the newer help file.  It doesn't matter if you load the online or offline version the load time cannot seem to become as fast or faster than when opening a *.chm file.  But, that quick access to chm is exactly why that format had to be replaced by more secure technology. 

Think of how happy you would be if your online banking app was %50 faster but let any hacker with a gradeschool education exploit your file storage and retrieval.  Yes, chm is that vulnerable!

[billko]

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@JÞB wrote:

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@raphschru wrote:

Hi Florian,

You are right, the online help as it is now is quite useless for everyday coding.

Here is a way to make LV open the offline help instead:

https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Offline-Help-window-in-LabVIEW-2022/m-p/4251163#M1236962

For me it takes "only" 5s to open a help page when the NI Offline Help Viewer is closed, and 3s to refresh the page when it is already open.

It is still a bit long for an offline help, but way faster than the online one.

Regards,

Raphaël.

---

As far as I know,  NOBODY has ever been happy about the load time for the newer help file.  It doesn't matter if you load the online or offline version the load time cannot seem to become as fast or faster than when opening a *.chm file.  But, that quick access to chm is exactly why that format had to be replaced by more secure technology. 

Think of how happy you would be if your online banking app was %50 faster but let any hacker with a gradeschool education exploit your file storage and retrieval.  Yes, chm is that vulnerable!

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Reducing the help to "just help".  It used to do so much more, like being able to find the VI in the palette or drop it onto your BD.  But I guess that's a vulnerability in itself.  If I'm not mistaken, the help file isn't even fully functional yet, with broken links and stuff.

[CDietz]

I switched from LabVIEW 2018 to LabVIEW 2023 and was introduced to the less convenient NI Offline Help Viewer for the first time. Compared to the classic CHM help, the new concept only brings disadvantages for the user:

• The help page loads far too slowly.
• Far too much white space between tree entries, text blocks, etc. This means that the content is unnecessarily expanded.
• After closing, the window size is not remembered. Every time you open the window, you have to laboriously adjust it with the mouse. That's really annoying.

I've been programming with LabVIEW for 24 years and miss the days when there was almost nothing to criticize about NI software. Hopefully I can retire soon!

[billko]

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@CDietz wrote:

I switched from LabVIEW 2018 to LabVIEW 2023 and was introduced to the less convenient NI Offline Help Viewer for the first time. Compared to the classic CHM help, the new concept only brings disadvantages for the user:

• The help page loads far too slowly.
• Far too much white space between tree entries, text blocks, etc. This means that the content is unnecessarily expanded.
• After closing, the window size is not remembered. Every time you open the window, you have to laboriously adjust it with the mouse. That's really annoying.

I've been programming with LabVIEW for 24 years and miss the days when there was almost nothing to criticize about NI software. Hopefully I can retire soon!

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Also, you can't drop the function on the BD or navigate to the palette.  And I guess the reason why they changed was because the ability to run scripts was a huge security thing.

[Yamaeda]

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@JÞB wrote:

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As far as I know,  NOBODY has ever been happy about the load time for the newer help file.  It doesn't matter if you load the online or offline version the load time cannot seem to become as fast or faster than when opening a *.chm file.  But, that quick access to chm is exactly why that format had to be replaced by more secure technology. 

Think of how happy you would be if your online banking app was %50 faster but let any hacker with a gradeschool education exploit your file storage and retrieval.  Yes, chm is that vulnerable!

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Though i can open a local HTML-file in a second ...

[Jay14159265]

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@JÞB wrote:

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...

Think of how happy you would be if your online banking app was %50 faster but let any hacker with a gradeschool education exploit your file storage and retrieval.  Yes, chm is that vulnerable!

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Please point me to the case where LabVIEW is used to create "online banking apps" because that would make my day : )