Windows Explorer Preview Pane

[FixedWire]

When using Explorer, it would be great to have a file preview pane much like Word, Excel or Acrobat has.

It would easily allow you to identify a VI, (or point out that code really needs to be refactored).

Here are a couple of links that show the idea:

Make Windows Vista Explorer Preview Pane Work for More File T

Windows Vista and Office: Writing Your Own Preview Handlers

Building Preview Handlers

Perhaps this could be setup like Excel's Sheets. "Sheet 1" shows the FP, "Sheet 2" shows the BD.

Good code reuse is always welcome but I suspect too few programmers, especially people new to LV, don't create their own libraries or add it to the User Library.

[dthor]

So... This?

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/LabVIEW-Open-Dialog-With-Preview/idi-p/1691608

[FixedWire]

not quite, here's an in image of the concept.

[dthor]

Ah, ok, I see the difference: preview in Windows vs preview in LabVIEW. Wouldn't this be something that Microsoft has to impliment?

[Manzolli]

There are some issues:

1) Show FP, BD or both? Selectable?

2) What to do for big FP or BD? Crop, reduce?

Microsoft should have an API to allow NI implement such feature. It's just an FP or BD image.

I like the idea, even though I don't know if it is feasible.

[FixedWire]

Make the FP or BD selectable - like Excel

Allow panning, similar to Acrobat pdf's

Large BD's, aha, this is the beginning of the end for sloppy code! Perhaps this will give incentive to clean some of it up. Good coding style limits the size of the BD. 

In the original post there are a couple of links to show how this can be done.