Loader Animation - How to Show and Hide Image?

[rex1030]

There are times when a program is processing data or generally busy and I want to show a "preloader" animation during those times so the user doesn't think my program has frozen up.

I found this sweet website that will make amazing loading animations for you. Any style, size, color you can think of. Its called Preloaders.net and its very cool. After you select what you want, it generates the .gif file for you to download and use. Here are a few examples...

... you get the idea

There don't seem to be any Labview examples of how to show/hide an image and I was wondering what's the best way to do this? Basically I want to show it when I am loading and hide it when I am not. I would like it to be simple and resuable.

[npoling]

I have done this in the past by creating a custom boolean control with the gif you want.  Then you can control the state and visibility of the boolean control very easily.

Nate

[Phreezer · Accepted solution]

Here are some VIs that do what I think you are looking for.  They are based on an example I got from somewhere else that used a picture ring to drive the animation.  I changed the images in the picture ring and added a little code to make the sizing of the window more dynamic.  If you want to customize it with your animations you will need to download a tool that lets you extract the individual frames from the GIF animations and import them into the picture ring (there are lots of other posts that go through how to do this).  Then you just resize the picture ring and size the VI window to the size you want when it pops up and you should be good.

-Matt

[Shazlan]

Nice... I think I may be able to use the VI in my future program. I've attempted to do one in the past but the result was kinda ugly. So, I decided to use string-based status bar instead. Now, I just need to look for some cute 'wait' or 'busy' animation

Thanks!

[rex1030]

I think the long term solution would be to create some custom boolean loading controls to put in my personal pallete library arsenal but for now Phreezer's cool ring control pack is gonna work great. Thanks!