LabVIEW Idea Exchange

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Don't force all LabVIEW windows to the top when one is selected

Status: Declined

National Instruments will not be implementing this idea. There is no major feature development planned for LabVIEW window management in the manner that would be required to implement this request.

My idea is to have LabVIEW cease and desist it's self-important modal behavior.  Not that I think LabVIEW is anything other than the most important application I run, but I don't think it should force its (many windows') way to the front of the line when I shift focus to a LabVIEW window.  I didn't find any other idea that matched this, but there is this discussion that covers the notion well.

 

An example case:  When chasing efficiency I frequently have Task Manager open to observe CPU usage when I change front panel controls.  I'll run the .vi and load Task Manager, but when I click on a front panel control ALL the LabVIEW windows come to the front and cover Task Manager:Modal.png

 

So, my suggestion is to have only the selected LabVIEW window come to the front.  I get the impression that Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-e behavior are why LabVIEW controls its own window z-placement, but leaving their function out of it, my suggestion is just to change the modal behavior of LabVIEW windows.

41 Comments
AristosQueue (NI)
NI Employee (retired)

Jon: It is impossible for LabVIEW. Windows says that all windows in the same application come to the foreground as a block. MS Word launches individual documents as separate applications... other applications do similar. But LabVIEW doesn't have that option because all the VIs are running in the same application (it would be hard to have subVIs if that weren't true). It simply is impossible in Windows as far as we could tell. The NXG redesign moved to a single document model, but that radical redesign really isn't in the cards for LabVIEW (indeed, it seemed to be a bad idea for NXG and was one of the reasons for resistance to NXG adoption).