MATLAB Creating Graphical User Interfaces

10 Lay Out a Programmatic UI

Adjust Programmatic UI Layouts Interactively

In this section...

“Set Positions of Components Interactively” on page 10- 41

“Align Components” on page 10- 51

“Set Colors Interactively” on page 10- 58

“Set Font Characteristics Interactively” on page 10- 59

Laying out a programmatic UI can take time and involves many small steps. For

example, you must position components manually—often several times—to place them

exactly where you want them to be. Establishing final settings for other properties and

coding statements for them also takes time. You can reduce the effort involved by taking

advantage of built-in MATLAB tools to establish values for component properties. The

following sections describe some of the tools.

Mode or Tool Use it to Commands

Plot edit mode Interactively edit and annotate

plots

plotedit

Property Editor Edit graphical properties of

objects

propedit, propertyeditor

Property

Inspector

Interactively display and edit

most object properties

inspect

Align Distribute

Tool

Align and distribute components

with respect to one another

align

Color Selector Choose a color from a palette of

colors and obtain its value

uisetcolor

Font Selector Preview character font, style, and

size and choose values for them

uisetfont

Some of these tools return property values, while others let you edit properties

interactively without returning their values. In particular, the Property Inspector lets

you interactively set almost any object property. You then can copy property values and

paste them into the Command Window or a code file. However, when you capture vector-

valued properties, such as Color or Position, the Inspector only lets you copy values one

number at a time.