NI LabVIEW 2011 features a new palette of controls and indicators.  Named the “Silver Controls” in honor of the 25th anniversary of the release of LabVIEW 1.0, the new controls sport rounded corners, drop shadows, and soft gradients to reflect current style while preserving existing performance and functionality.

NI LabVIEW 2011 Silver Controls

These new controls join the Modern”, “Classic”, and “System” controls in the Controls palette.  The Silver controls function similarly to the Modern controls so you can drop them into existing applications without worrying about changing behavior.

Silver Control Highlights

Drop Shadows

Commonly used in modern UI designs, the subtle drop shadow adds depth and helps the controls stand out from the background.

Antialiasing

Computer monitors with square pixels can never display a true rounded or diagonal line without some degree of jaggedness. The Silver controls use antialiased lines, resulting in smoother gauges, meters, dials, and other nonrectangular displays.

Gradients

It is rare to see purely flat color in the real world, due to the way light hits surfaces. Mimicking this effect by applying slight gradients to UI objects adds visual interest and modern style.

Lighter Default Panel Color

The default panel background color is a lighter shade of gray to better match the Silver control style and current UI design trends.

Icon Buttons

Decal icons can quickly help identify action button functions. While buttons have always been customizable, it took time and resources to take advantage of this useful feature. The Silver controls come with a subpalette of Boolean buttons with decals already applied.

Silver Control Gallery

Figure 7. Silver Controls

Tips, Tricks, and Considerations

Make Silver Your Default Control Style

Options Window, New and Changed Category

As in previous versions of LabVIEW, any control you create using a right-click menu defaults to Modern style. You can change the default style to Silver by selecting Tools»Options and choosing Silver style under either the New and Changed or Front Panel category.

Changing the Default Panel Background Color

Options Window, Environment Category

If you prefer the darker front panel color, you can change back to it. Select Tools»Options and select the Environment category. Scroll down to Colors, uncheck the Use default colors checkbox, and click the gray box under Front Panel. Change the color to RGB(179, 179, 179). For reference, the new, lighter gray is RGB(226, 226, 226).

Differences Between Mac OS and Linux

The new Silver controls work with Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, and Linux; however, their appearance on non-Windows systems is different than on Windows systems.

Fill Slide Windows

Creating Your Own Custom Controls

You can customize LabVIEW controls and save them for reuse and distribution. To download additional community-created controls and view customization tutorials, visit the UI Interest Group in the NI Community.

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Reader Comments | Submit a comment »

As mentioned above, I have changed my default style to silver. But in the block diagram, whenever I right click on a block and create a control, it defaults to modern style. Every time I have to replace it with silver style. How can make silver style as default here?
- Dec 2, 2011

toggle button switches
I would like see the toggel buttons/switches as well in a silver design
- Oct 26, 2011

Silver controls for vision?
These controls look much better than the older ones. Are you planning to support silver design for Image Display Control in Vision Development Module?
- Vladimir Drzik, DATALAN, a.s.. vladimir_drzik@datalan.sk - Sep 20, 2011