LabVIEW Public Beta Program in 2024
The help is basically unusable
I am aware that we can configure it to use the local help, but by default it is using the online help when we "right-click...help" on a primitive.
The problem is that it takes at least 20 seconds to pull up that help page, so if we need help once per minute, we are wasting 30% of our valuable time twiddling thumbs. Something needs to change so this is actually usable.
Browser opens quickly, but then it takes forever to load that help page. Something needs optimization!
This is not just a temporary problem, it happens every single time, even if I get help for the same primitive again a minute later. I saw it last week and I see it today.
Obviously, the problem is with the web server setup and might be easy to fix.
Maybe this is a server running on an Arduino that composes the relevant help page from scratch from scattered database entries based on the current LabVIEW version. Maybe NI grossly underestimated the server load of millions of people requiring help every millisecond.
The help pages seem to come up faster when finding the link with Google, so what's the difference? (At least today. I'll try from within LabVIEW later once more).
I understand that having the help on the web is easier and is identical for windows/mac/linux. Maintaining the chm is a burden in the long run, even though it has that nice incorporation of "place on diagram" and "open example", etc. features).
Ultimately also replacing the example finder with a well organized web version of it would help too. It feels so stale! Once we have that, the online help could seamlessly link to the examples.
