Creating Graphical User Interfaces

GUIDE - GUI Development Environment

GUIDE, the MATLAB Graphical User Interface development environment, provides a set of tools for creating GUIs. These tools greatly simplify the process of laying out and programming a GUI. This section introduces you to GUIDE and the layout tools it provides.

When you open a GUI in GUIDE, it is displayed in the Layout Editor, which is the control panel for all of the GUIDE tools. The Layout Editor enables you to lay out a GUI quickly and easily by dragging components, such as push buttons, pop-up menus, or axes, from the component palette into the layout area. The following picture shows the Layout Editor.

Once you lay out your GUI and set each component's properties, using the tools in the Layout Editor, you can program the GUI with the M-file Editor. Finally, when you press the Run button on the toolbar, the functioning GUI appears outside the Layout Editor window.

GUIDE Toolset

For more information on the full set of GUIDE development tools, see the following sections:

• Laying Out GUIs - The Layout Editor - add and arrange objects in the figure window.
• Aligning Components in the Layout Editor - align objects with respect to each other.
• Setting Component Properties - The Property Inspector - inspect and set property values.
• Viewing the Object Hierarchy - The Object Browserr - observe a hierarchical list of the Handle Graphics objects in the current MATLAB session.
• Creating Menus - The Menu Editor - create a menu bar or a context menu for any component in your layout.
• Setting the Tab Order - The Tab Order Editor - change the order in which components are selected by tabbing.

Getting Started with GUIDE

GUI FIG-Files and M-Files