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2784 voti
Are you a Simulink user eager to learn how to create apps with App Designer? Or an App Designer enthusiast looking to dive into Simulink?
Don't miss today's article on the Graphics and App Building Blog by @Robert Philbrick! Discover how to build Simulink Apps with App Designer, streamlining control of your simulations!
Build Simulink Apps with App Designer
Welcome to MATLAB Central's first Ask Me Anything (AMA) session! Over the next few weeks, I look forward to addressing any questions or curiosities you might have about MATLAB, the forum, sasquatches, or whatever's on your mind. Having volunteered as a contributor to this community before joining MathWorks, I'm excited to act as a bridge between these two worlds. Let's kick things off by sharing a little-known fact about the forum’s staff contributors!
A couple of years ago, before I joined MathWorks as a developer on the Graphics and Charting team, I often wondered who were the MathWorkers with the [staff] moniker answering questions in the Answers forum. Is their MATLAB Central activity part of their day-to-day job expectations? Do they serve specific roles on some kind of community outreach team? Is their work in the forum voluntary in the same way that non-staff contributors volunteer their time?
Now that I'm on the inside, I'd like to share a secret with my fellow MATLAB users and MATLAB Central enthusiasts: with the exception of the MathWorks Support Team, staff participation in the Answers forum is completely voluntary! The staff contributions you see in the forum arise from pure intrinsic motivation to connect with users, help people out of ruts, and spread the word about our product!
For example, Steven Lord has contributed 20-150 answers per month for 9 years! Steven is a quality engineer for core MATLAB numerical functions. Cris LaPierre develops training material and has been a faithful contributor in the forum for almost 6 years! Kojiro Saito and Akira Agata have been tackling Japanese content for more than 7 years! There are many others who have inspired me as a user, and I am honored to now call colleagues: Peter Perkins, Michio, Joss Knight, Alan Weiss, Jiro Doke, Edric Ellis, and many others who deserve appreciation.
The forum's success hinges on the invaluable contributions from the majority of non-staff volunteers, whose dedication and expertise fuel our community. But I know I wasn't alone in wondering about these staff contributors, so now you're in on the secret!
I'm curious to know what other topics you're interested in learning about. Ask me anything!
Adam Danz
Adam Danz
Last activity il 9 Dic 2023

Why do you save figure (.fig) files?

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2%
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2%
2097 voti
Adam Danz
Adam Danz
Last activity il 13 Ott 2023

Approximating π with durations

Over the weekend I came across a pi approximation using durations of years and weeks (image below, Wolfram, eq. 89), accurate to 6 digits using the average Gregorian year (365.2425 days).
Here it is in MATLAB. I divided by 1 week at the end rather than multiplying by its reciprocal because you can’t divide a numeric by a duration in MATLAB (1/week).
weeks = @(n)n*days(7);
piApprox = ((years(13)-weeks(6))/years(13) + weeks(3)) / weeks(1)
% piApprox = 3.141593493469302
Here’s a breakdown
  • The first argument becomes 12.885 yrs / 13 yrs or 0.99115
  • Add three weeks: 0.99115 + 3 weeks = 21.991 days
  • The reduced fraction becomes 21.991 days / 7 days
Now it looks a lot closer to the more familiar approximation for pi 22/7 but with greater precision!
Adam Danz
Adam Danz
Last activity il 6 Mar 2024

To hold or not to hold

I'm curious how the community uses the hold command when creating charts and graphics in MATLAB. In short, hold on sets up the axes to add new objects to the axes while hold off sets up the axes to reset when new objects are added.
When you use hold on do you always follow up with hold off? What's your reasoning on this decision?
Can't wait to discuss this here! I'd love to hear from newbies and experts alike!
figure out what my old code does
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address a code analyzer warning
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16434 voti
New in R2022b: GridSizeChangedFcn
tiledlayout() creates a TiledChartLayout object that defines a gridded layout of axes within a figure. When using the 'flow' option, the grid size becomes dynamic and updates as axes are added or as the figure size changes. These features were introduced in R2019b and if you're still stuck on using subplot, you're missing out on several other great features of tiledlayout.
Starting in MATLAB R2022b you can define a callback function that responds to changes to the grid size in flow arrangements by setting the new gridSizeChangedFcn.
Use case
I often use a global legend to represent data across all axes within a figure. When the figure is tall and narrow, I want the legend to be horizontally oriented at the bottom of the figure but when the figure is short and wide, I prefer a vertically oriented legend on the right of the figure. By using the gridSizeChangedFcn, now I can update the legend location and orientation when the grid size changes.
Demo
gridSizeChangeFcn works like all other graphics callback functions. In this demo, I've named the gridSizeChangedFcn "updateLegendLayout", assigned by an anonymous function. The first input is the TiledChartLayout object and the second input is the event object that indicates the old and new grid sizes. The legend handle is also passed into the function. Since all of the tiles contain the same groups of data, the legend is based on data in the last tile.
As long as the legend is valid, the gridSizeChangedFcn updates the location and orientation of the legend so that when the grid is tall, the legend will be horizontal at the bottom of the figure and when the grid is wide, the legend will be vertical at the right of the figure.
Since the new grid size is available as a property in the TiledChartLayout object, I chose not to use the event argument. This way I can directly call the callback function at the end to update the legend without having to create an event.
Run this example from an m-file. Then change the width or height of the figure to demonstrate the legend adjustments.
% Prepare data
data1 = sort(randn(6))*10;
data2 = sort(randn(6))*10;
labels = ["A","B","C","D","E","F"];
groupLabels = categorical(["Control", "Test"]);
% Generate figure
fig = figure;
tcl = tiledlayout(fig, "flow", TileSpacing="compact", Padding="compact");
nTiles = height(data1);
h = gobjects(1,nTiles);
for i = 1:nTiles
ax = nexttile(tcl);
groupedData = [data1(i,:); data2(i,:)];
h = bar(ax,groupLabels, groupedData, "grouped");
title(ax,"condition " + i)
end
title(tcl,"GridSizeChangedFcn Demo")
ylabel(tcl,"Score")
legh = legend(h, labels);
title(legh,"Factors")
% Define and call the GridSizeChangeFcn
tcl.GridSizeChangedFcn = @(tclObj,event)updateLegendLayout(tclObj,event,legh);
updateLegendLayout(tcl,[],legh);
% Manually resize the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the figure
function updateLegendLayout(tclObj,~,legh)
% Evoked when the TiledChartLayout grid size changes in flow arrangements.
% tclObj - TiledChartLayout object
% event - (unused in this demo) contains old and new grid size
% legh - legend handle
if isgraphics(legh,'legend')
if tclObj.GridSize(1) > tclObj.GridSize(2)
legh.Layout.Tile = "south";
legh.Orientation = "horizontal";
else
legh.Layout.Tile = "east";
legh.Orientation = "vertical";
end
end
end
Give it a shot in MATLAB R2022b
  • Replace the legend with a colorbar to update the location and orientation of the colorbar.
  • Define a GridSizeChangedFcn within the loop so that it is called every time a tile is added.
  • Create a figure with many tiles (~20) and dynamically set a color to each row of axes.
  • Assign xlabels only to the bottom row of tiles and ylabels to only the left column of tiles.
Learn about other new features
This article is attached as a live script.
Uniform spacing and the problem of round-off error
The vector [3 4 5 6 7 8 9] is uniformly spaced with a step size of 1. So is [3 2 1 0 -1 -2] but with a step size of -1.
The vector [1 2 4 8] is not uniformly spaced.
A vector v with uniform spacing has the same finite interval or step size between consecutive elements of the vector. But sometimes round-off error poses a problem in calculating uniformity.
Take, for example, the vector produced by
format shortg
v = linspace(1,9,7)
v = 1x7
1 2.3333 3.6667 5 6.3333 7.6667 9
Linspace produces linearly spaced vectors but the intervals between elements of v, computed by diff(v), are not identical.
dv = diff(v)
dv = 1x6
1.3333 1.3333 1.3333 1.3333 1.3333 1.3333
dv == dv(1)
ans = 1×6 logical array
1 0 0 1 0 1
diff(dv)
ans = 1x5
4.4409e-16 0 -4.4409e-16 8.8818e-16 -8.8818e-16
Some extra steps are therefore necessary to set a tolerance that ignores error introduced by floating point arithmetic.
New in R2022b: isuniform
Determining uniformity of a vector became a whole lot easier in MATLAB R2022b with the new isuniform function.
[tf,step] = isuniform(v)
isuniform returns a logical scalar indicating whether vector v is uniformly spaced within a round-off tolerance and returns the step size (or NaN if v is not uniform).
Let's look at the results for our vector v,
[tf,step] = isuniform(v)
tf = logical
1
step =
1.3333
How about non-uniformly spaced vector?
[tf,step] = isuniform(logspace(1,5,4))
tf = logical
0
step =
NaN
Give it a shot in MATLAB R2022b
  • What happens when all elements of v are equal?
  • Can you produce a vector with uniform spacing without using colons or linspace?
  • What additional steps would be needed to use isuniform with circular data?
References
This article is attached as a live script.
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20 minutes makes a difference

I struggled to learn MATLAB at first. A colleague at my university gave me about 20 minutes of his time to show me some basic features, how to reference the documentation, and how to debug code. That was enough for me to start using MATLAB independently. After a few semesters of developing analyses and visualizations, I started answering questions in the forum when I had time. I became addicted to volunteering and learning from the breadth of analytical problems the forum exposed me to.



Have you ever solved a problem using a MathWorks product?

If your answer is YES, you may be the right person to help someone looking for guidance to solve a similar problem. Some answers in the MATLAB Central community forum maintain 1000s of views per month and some files on the File Exchange have 1000s of downloads. Volunteering a moment of your time to answer a question or to share content to the File Exchange may benefit countless individuals in the near and distant future and you will likely learn a lot by contributing too!

  • 3616 questions were asked last month in the forum and in that time, 747 volunteers answered at least one question!
  • 62% of those volunteers were first-time contributors!
  • 335 volunteer contributors shared content in the File Exchange last month!
  • 1: the number of contributions it takes to make a difference.

This week is National Volunteer Week in the USA (April 17-23). Challenge yourself and your colleagues by committing to help a stranger break barriers in their path to learning MATLAB.



How to volunteer and contribute to the MATLAB Central Community

Here are two easy ways to accept the volunteer challenge.

Contribute to the MATLAB Answers Forum

  1. Go to the MATLAB Answers repository. This page shows all unanswered questions starting with the most recent question. Use the filters on the left to see answered questions or questions belonging to a specific category. Alternatively, search for questions using keywords in the search field or visit the landing page.
  2. Open a few questions that interest you based on the question titles and tags.
  3. Decide how you'd like to contribute. Sometimes a question needs refinement or requires a bit of work to address. Decide whether to leave a comment that guides the user in the right direction, answer the question, or skip to the next question. The decision tree below is how some experienced contributors approach these decisions.

Pro tips

  • Newer questions have more traffic and are often answered within an hour or minutes.
  • Multiple answers often add valuable alternative perspectives and solutions.
  • Sometimes answers aren't accepted or the asker disappears. Be not discouraged. Your answer holds much value.



Contribute to the File Exchange

  1. Choose a function, script, demo, or toolbox you created that may be helpful to the community.
  2. Go to the MathWorks File Exchange. Search for submissions that are similar to your idea and decide whether your idea adds value.
  3. Prepare your code for open-source sharing. The best submissions include brief documentation that explains the purpose of the code, inputs, expected outputs and limitations.
  4. Use the "Publish your code" button from the link above. This will guide you through the submission process.



Make a difference

No matter what level you are at as a MATLAB developer, you have skills that others around you could benefit from learning. Take the challenge and become a giant.

Let us know about your experience with MATLAB Central volunteers or your experience becoming a MATLAB Central volunteer in the comments below!

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.

MATLAB R2022a provides app developers more control over user navigation through app components using the keyboard's Tab key.

Part 1. The new focus function: programmatically set keyboard focus to a UI component

Part 2. Modify focus order of components

Today we'll review Part 2. See yesterday's Community Highlight for Part 1.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well-designed apps have an obvious flow through interactive fields and, as we learned yesterday, using the Tab key to move the focus to the next UI component is faster and more efficient than using a mouse. Here we'll learn how to read and set the tab order of UI components in an app.

Understanding tab and stacking order

By default, tab order in MATLAB apps is controlled by the stacking order in the Component Browser. Initially, the stacking order within the component browswer is based on the sequence in which the objects were added to the container object within the app. MATLAB R2020b gave us control to edit the stacking order by selecting a component and using either the Reorder tool from the Canvas toolstrip or by right-clicking the component and selecting Reorder from the context menu [1]. Tab order flows from bottom to top through the Component Browswer hierarchy for objects that are focusable. Sending a component backward within the stack sets its tab order to earlier relative to other components.

Setting tab focus order in R2022a

Three additional tab order features were added in MATLAB R2022a that make it easier to control app navigation with the Tab key.

1. Sort and Filter by Tab Order : Instead of using the Reorder tool which lists components in reverse tab-order and includes components that are not focusable, filter the list by focusable components and sort them by tab-order using the View dropdown menu within the Component Browser (label 1 in image below). From here, you can drag and drop components to set their tab (and stacking) order.

2. Auto Tab Order : To automatically sort focusable components within your app so that the tab order is from left-to-right and then top-to-bottom, in App Designer, from Design View, select the Canvas tab > Tab Order button > Apply Auto Tab Order (label 2 in image below). Alternatively, you can apply auto tab order to components within a container such as a uipanel or uitab by right-clicking on the container within the Component Browser and selecting Apply Auto Tab Order.

3. Visualize Tab Order : You no longer have to read and interpret the handle names in the component browser to understand the current tab order of UI components. Instead, view an animation of tab order within App Designer. From Design View, select the Canvas tab > Tab Order button > Visualize Tab Order (label 3 in image below).

.

Contextual focus control: the power of combining focus() with setting tab order

Yesterday's Community Highlight showed how to programmatically set UI component focus using the focus(c) function. This, combined with control of tab order, allows app developers to implement contextual focus control. For example, when a radio button is selected in the GIF below, the corresponding UI Tab is selected programmatically and the keyboard focus is set to the first component within the UI Tab thus allowing the user to smoothly continue keyboard navigation. This is achieved by a callback function that responds to changes in the Button Group that sets the SelectedTab property of the TabGroup and uses the new focus() function. For details, see the attached focusAndTabOrderDemo.mlapp.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Stay tuned

Follow Community Highlights to get notifications for new content.

Let us know what interests you in the new MATLAB R2022a release in the comment section below.

See also

Footnotes

[1] R202b release notes: change the stacking order of UI components

This Community Highlight is attached as a live script.

.

MATLAB R2022a provides app developers more control over user navigation through app components using the keyboard's Tab key.

Part 1. The new focus function: programmatically set keyboard focus to a UI component

Part 2. Modify focus order of components

Today we'll review Part 1. Come back tomorrow for Part 2.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Programmatically set UI component focus

Did you know that you can save ~2 seconds every time you use a keyboard shortcut rather than reaching for your mouse [1,2]?

I need you to focus here: starting in MATLAB R2022a, use the new focus function to set keyboard focus to a specific UI component.

By specifying the component handle ( c ) in focus(c),

  1. The figure containing the component is displayed
  2. A blue frame appears around the component
  3. The user can directly interact with the component.

.

Which components are focusable?

Focusable components are those that a user can interact with using the keyboard. So an object set to Enable='off' or Visible='off' cannot be in focus. See the documentation for more details.

What will you do with all of that extra time saved?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Stay tuned

Tomorrow we'll learn how to apply the new focus function with control of tab order to create contextual flow of UI component focus. Follow Community Highlights to get notifications.

Let us know what interests you in the new MATLAB R2022a release in the comment section below.

See also

Footnotes

[1] Lane et. al. (2005). International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 18(2).

[2] Michels (2018). median.com

This Community Highlight is attached as a live script.

Starting in MATLAB R2022a, use the append option in exportgraphics to create GIF files from animated axes, figures, or other visualizations.

This basic template contains just two steps:

% 1. Create the initial image file
gifFile = 'myAnimation.gif';
exportgraphics(obj, gifFile);

% 2. Within a loop, append the gif image
for i = 1:20

      %   %   %   %   %   %    % 
      % Update the figure/axes %
      %   %   %   %   %   %    % 
      exportgraphics(obj, gifFile, Append=true);
  end

Note, exportgraphics will not capture UI components such as buttons and knobs and requires constant axis limits.

To create animations of images or more elaborate graphics, learn how to use imwrite to create animated GIFs .

Share your MATLAB animated GIFs in the comments below!

See Also

This Community Highlight is attached as a live script

Adam Danz
Adam Danz
Last activity il 17 Mar 2022

New in MATLAB R2022a: Fontsize scaling

You've spent hours designing the perfect figure and now it's time to add it to a presentation or publication but the font sizes in the figure are too small to see for the people in the back of the room or too large for the figure space in the publication. You've got titles, subtitles, axis labels, legends, text objects, and other labels but their handles are inaccessible or scattered between several blocks of code. Making your figure readable no longer requires digging through your code and setting each text object's font size manually.

Starting in MATLAB R2022a, you have full control over a figure's font sizes and font units using the new fontsize function (see release notes ).

Use fontsize() to

  • Set FontSize and FontUnits properties for all text within specified graphics objects
  • Incrementally increase or decrease font sizes
  • Specify a scaling factor to maintain relative font sizes
  • Reset font sizes and font units to their default values . Note that the default font size and units may not be the same as the font sizes/units set directly with your code.

When specifying an object handle or an array of object handles, fontsize affects the font sizes and font units of text within all nested objects.

While you're at it, also check out the new fontname function that allows you to change the font name of objects in a figure!

Give the new fontsize function a test drive using the following demo figure in MATLAB R2022a or later and try the following commands:

% Increase all font sizes within the figure by a factor of 1.5
fontsize(fig, scale=1.5)

% Set all font sizes in the uipanel to 16
fontsize(uip, 16, "pixels")

% Incrementally increase the font sizes of the left two axes (x1.1)
% and incrementally decrease the font size of the legend (x0.9)
fontsize([ax1, ax2], "increase")
fontsize(leg, "decrease")

% Reset the font sizes within the entire figure to default values
fontsize(fig, "default")

% Create fake behavioral data
rng('default')
fy = @(a,x)a*exp(-(((x-8).^2)/(2*3.^2)));
x = 1 : 0.5 : 20;
y = fy(32,x);
ynoise = y+8*rand(size(y))-4;
selectedTrial = 13;

% Plot behavioral data
fig = figure('Units','normalized','Position',[0.1, 0.1, 0.4, 0.5]);
movegui(fig, 'center')
tcl = tiledlayout(fig,2,2); 
ax1 = nexttile(tcl); 
hold(ax1,'on')
h1 = plot(ax1, x, ynoise, 'bo', 'DisplayName', 'Response');
h2 = plot(ax1, x, y, 'r-', 'DisplayName', 'Expected');
grid(ax1, 'on')
title(ax1, 'Behavioral Results')
subtitle(ax1, sprintf('Trial %d', selectedTrial))
xlabel(ax1, 'Time (seconds)','Interpreter','Latex')
ylabel(ax1, 'Responds ($\frac{deg}{sec}$)','Interpreter','Latex')
leg = legend([h1,h2]);

% Plot behavioral error
ax2 = nexttile(tcl,3);
behavioralError = ynoise-y; 
stem(ax2, x, behavioralError)
yline(ax2, mean(behavioralError), 'r--', 'Mean', ...
    'LabelVerticalAlignment','bottom')
grid(ax2, 'on')
title(ax2, 'Behavioral Error')
subtitle(ax2, ax1.Subtitle.String)
xlabel(ax2, ax1.XLabel.String,'Interpreter','Latex')
ylabel(ax2, 'Response - Expected ($\frac{deg}{sec}$)','Interpreter','Latex')

% Simulate spike train data
ntrials = 25; 
nSamplesPerSecond = 3; 
nSeconds = max(x) - min(x); 
nSamples = ceil(nSeconds*nSamplesPerSecond);
xTime = linspace(min(x),max(x), nSamples);
spiketrain = round(fy(1, xTime)+(rand(ntrials,nSamples)-.5));
[trial, sample] = find(spiketrain);
time = xTime(sample);

% Spike raster plot
axTemp = nexttile(tcl, 2, [2,1]);
uip = uipanel(fig, 'Units', axTemp.Units, ...
    'Position', axTemp.Position, ...
    'Title', 'Neural activity', ...
    'BackgroundColor', 'W');
delete(axTemp)
tcl2 = tiledlayout(uip, 3, 1);
pax1 = nexttile(tcl2); 
plot(pax1, time, trial, 'b.', 'MarkerSize', 4)
yline(pax1, selectedTrial-0.5, 'r-', ...
    ['\leftarrow Trial ',num2str(selectedTrial)], ...
    'LabelHorizontalAlignment','right', ...
    'FontSize', 8); 
linkaxes([ax1, ax2, pax1], 'x')
pax1.YLimitMethod = 'tight';
title(pax1, 'Spike train')
xlabel(pax1, ax1.XLabel.String)
ylabel(pax1, 'Trial #')

% Show MRI
pax2 = nexttile(tcl2,2,[2,1]); 
[I, cmap] = imread('mri.tif');
imshow(I,cmap,'Parent',pax2)
hold(pax2, 'on')
th = 0:0.1:2*pi; 
plot(pax2, 7*sin(th)+84, 5*cos(th)+90, 'r-','LineWidth',2)
text(pax2, pax2.XLim(2), pax2.YLim(1), 'ML22a',...
    'FontWeight', 'bold', ...
    'Color','r', ...
    'VerticalAlignment', 'top', ...
    'HorizontalAlignment', 'right', ...
    'BackgroundColor',[1 0.95 0.95])
title(pax2, 'Area of activation')

% Overall figure title
title(tcl, 'Single trial responses')

This Community Highlight is attached as a live script.

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Starting in MATLAB R2021a axis tick labels will auto-rotate to avoid overlap when the user manually specifies ticks or tick labels ( release notes ). In custom visualization functions, the tick label density or tick label lengths may be variable and unknown. The new auto-rotation feature removes the burden of detecting the need to rotate manually-set labels and eliminates the need to manually rotate them.

Many properties and combinations of properties can cause tick labels to overlap if they are not rotated.

  • Length of tick labels
  • Number of tick labels
  • Interval between tick labels
  • Font size
  • Font name
  • Figure size
  • Axes size
  • Viewing angle of the axes

Demo: varying tick density and length of tick labels

These 9 axes vary by the number of x-ticks and length of x-tick-labels. MATLAB auto-rotates the labels when needed.

Demo: Changes to axis view angle and rotation

The auto-rotation feature updates the label angles as the axes change programmatically or during user interaction.

What if I don't want auto-rotation?

Auto-rotation mode is on by default for each X|Y|Z axis. When the tick label rotation angle is manually set from the X|Y|ZTickLabelRotation property of axes or by using xtickangle | ytickangle | ztickangle , auto-rotation is turned off. Auto-rotation can also be turned off by setting the X|Y|ZTickLabelRotationMode axis property to manual but it's important to also hold the axis properties so that the rotation mode does not revert to the default value, auto. If you're looking for a broader method of reverting to older behavior you can set the default label rotation mode to manual at the start of a function that produces multiple plots and then revert to the factory default rotation mode at the end of the file (consider using onCleanup).

set(groot,'defaultAxesXTickLabelRotationMode','manual')
set(groot,'defaultAxesYTickLabelRotationMode','manual')
set(groot,'defaultAxesZTickLabelRotationMode','manual')

% Revert to factory-default
set(groot,'defaultAxesXTickLabelRotationMode','remove')
set(groot,'defaultAxesYTickLabelRotationMode','remove')
set(groot,'defaultAxesZTickLabelRotationMode','remove')

A copy of this Community Highlight is attached as a live script.

Adam Danz
Adam Danz
Last activity il 12 Maggio 2021

Four New App Features in MATLAB R2021a

Four (of many) new features for Apps in MATLAB R2021a

These four new features are the solutions to many inquiries in the Answers forum that continue to receive hundreds of views per month long after they were asked.

Table of Contents

  • Keyboard Shortcuts for UI Components
  • Programmatically scroll UITables
  • Figure always on top
  • UI hyperlink component
  • Demo app: Keyboard shortcut challenge

Keyboard Shortcuts for UI Components

Keyboard shortcuts can now change the focus and make contiguous and non-contiguous selections in ListBox, Table, DatePicker, and ColorPicker menus created in uifigures. The table below summarizes the shortcuts made available in R2021a ( release notes ).

Reminder: in MATLAB R2020b and later you can change the tab order of objects in an app by changing their stack order in AppDesigner using the Reorder tool in the drop-down menu or by right-clicking the component and selecting Reorder from the menu (see R2020b release notes and a screenshot in the Answers forum ).

Programmatically scroll UITables

The scroll function was added in R2016a but as of R2021a it can be used with uitables to programmatically scroll to the top, bottom, left, or right of a table or to a specific row, column or cell ( release notes ). Combined with a uistyle (R2019b) you can scroll to and highlight any part of the uitable.

Syntax examples:

Figure always on top

Figures created with uifigure now have an additional WindowStyle property: 'alwaysontop' ( release notes ). Figures with this setting will stay on top of other windows but unlike the modal option, other windows are still accessible.

See the WindowStyle property description for tips on setting and changing this property.

To toggle the AlwaysOnTop state of your app using a checkbox, state button, or another UI component, follow this callback function template,

function alwaysOnTopCheckBoxValueChanged(app, event)
    value = app.alwaysOnTopCheckBox.Value;
    if value
        app.UIFigure.WindowStyle = 'alwaysontop';
    else
        app.UIFigure.WindowStyle = 'normal';
    end
end

UI hyperlink component

Use the uihyperlink function or the UI hyperlink component in App Designer or a uifigure to add and configure a clickable link ( release notes ). The hyperlink can be assigned to a figure, panel object, tab object, ButtonGroup, or GridLayout object when created in a uifigure. In addition to setting the text and URL, there are lots of properties to control the text format including the VisitedColor property that controls the color of the text after the link is clicked and an optional user-defined HyperlinkClickedFcn function that is evoked when the link is clicked.

Demo app: Keyboard shortcut challenge

The attached zip file contains an app, keyboardShortcutsDemo_R2021a.mlapp , that demonstrates these 4 features. The app displays the extent of arctic sea ice from 1979 to 2016 during the months when extent typically maximizes and minimizes.

Mouseless challenge: After opening the app, without using your mouse, try the following.

  • Select a month (September or March) and any number of years from the list boxes
  • Navigate through the Date Picker and select a date within the range or your selected years (disabled when only 1 year is selected).
  • Navigate to the always-on-top checkbox to pin the app to the top of other windows.
  • Navigate to the text box and enter a year that appears in the uitable to go to that row in the uitable (disabled when only 1 year is selected).
  • Navigate to the URL and press Enter to open the website containing the raw data.

Download the attached zip file, FourNewAppFeatures_R2021a.zip, for a Live script copy of this thread and an app that demonstrates each feature.