createInterface

8.2: createInterface

The interface creation is handled in the createInterface subfunction. This has two distinct sections: menu building and widget arrangement. The menus are built using the standard MATLAB menu building command uimenu, so let's concentrate on the widget arrangement.

The top-level layout is a horizontal arrangement, placing the controls to the left of the main plot. We make the layout draggable by using the "flex" variant of HBox, and put a panel in each side. Note that setting the "HelpFcn" for the view panel adds a small "?" icon for bringing up help. See here for more details.


% Add the contents
mainLayout = uiextras.HBoxFlex( 'Parent', gui.Window, 'Spacing', 3 );

% Create the panels
controlPanel = uiextras.BoxPanel( ...
   'Parent', mainLayout, ...
   'Title', 'Select a demo:' );
gui.ViewPanel = uiextras.BoxPanel( ...
   'Parent', mainLayout, ...
   'Title', 'Viewing: ???', ...
   'HelpFcn', @onDemoHelp );

% Adjust the main layout

set( mainLayout, 'Sizes', [-1,-2]  );

The controls panel is filled with a vertical layout containing the listbox and a button. Note the callbacks that are specified for both the list and button. These both call further subfunctions that are able to access the common "data" and "gui" shared structures.


% Create the controls
controlLayout = uiextras.VBox( 'Parent', controlPanel, ...
   'Padding', 3, 'Spacing', 3 );
gui.ListBox = uicontrol( 'Style', 'list', ...
   'BackgroundColor', 'w', ...
   'Parent', controlLayout, ...
   'String', demoList(:), ...
   'Value', 1, ...
   'Callback', @onListSelection);
gui.HelpButton = uicontrol( 'Style', 'PushButton', ...
   'Parent', controlLayout, ...
   'String', 'Help for <demo>', ...
   'Callback', @onDemoHelp );
set( controlLayout, 'Sizes', [-1 28] ); % Make the list fill the space

Finally, the view itself is simply an axes placed inside the view panel:


% Create the view
gui.ViewAxes = axes( 'Parent', gui.ViewPanel );

(Full source code for this application is available here: [ view | edit | run ] )