How to resize all children automatically when creating a uifigure with uibuttons etc?

Hello dear MATLAB folks,

I want to create a GUI with the uifigure command.

   uifg1=uifigure;

Then I place a button

uibt1=uibutton('parent',uifg1);

I also check that

uifg1.AutoResizeChildren = 'on'

but when i resize the uifg1 with my mouse it does not resize the button.

I can't use GUIDE, because the GUI must be modular expandable.

[Adam]

Are the units of the button set to 'normalized'?

[Z.P.]

Thank you for the hint but tt displays on the command line that there is not such a property on the Button class.

[Adam]

Ah yes, I remember hearing that. I guess resizing buttons generally look stupid, but removing the option altogether for uibuttons is surprising.

I guess you'd have to program your own resize function then for components that aren't resizeable.

[Z.P.]

But why does resizing buttons work when i create them with GUIDE and the set the whole GUI to be resizable?

There must be a functionality to resize all items that are onto my uifigure.

But I still dind' find anything.

[Rik]

There is a fundamental difference between GUIDE and the AppCreator. There are some small differences and some bigger difference, but this is one of them.

I personally disagree with the opinion that resizing buttons look stupid (although in general I would agree with discouraging the use). Sometimes I feel Mathworks didn't/doesn't make the best decisions when creating UI functionalities.

But still they are miles ahead of Octave, so I'm not complaining too much.

[Z.P.]

Is there a possibility to implement a resize function for every button/text field dropdown and so on (i have houndreds of them).

I have to make the GUI resizable that it fits on different screens. So for example if the user has a 4k small laptop screen the GUI has to be expanded to e.g. 90% the width.

[Adam]

When you set a GUIDE GUI to be resizeable it changes the units of all the components to normalized, which is why they change size when you resize. I don't know if app designer does this for components that support 'normalized' units, but since pushbuttons don't support this they definitely won't change.

You can write a single resize function for your whole figure, I would not recommend writing individual ones for each component (and I don't think the components have a resize function callback to set, though I may be wrong).

I've never done this myself as I tend to use the GUI Layout toolbox for GUIs that are more complex than what I do in GUIDE, but this involves programming all the UI yourself without a graphical design layout.

[Z.P.]

Thank You Sir, but I think that this Toolbox is not an option for me, because it can't be assured everyone has such a toolbox when maintaining the software.

[Rik]

The toolbox is not one by Mathworks, but it is on the FEX, so you can just use it. I can't really tell if it is simply a design tool, or if it is required to run it, but you may be allowed to package this with you GUI.

[Adam]

You can package any components that are needed into an executable. They are just .m files.

Answer 1

[Z.P.]

I solved it with a "scale button". I wrote a function that finds all children of a GUI and then scales them child by child.

[Adam]

Was it not possible to do the same code you put under that button in the SizeChangedFcn of the figure so that it happens automatically?

[Z.P.]

Well this could be possible but it was easier for me now to click on a button instead of doing some resizing with the mouse.

I really wanted to make this happen when the GUI is being moved somewhere, but this nice super duper "scale button" is exactly what I want to have.

But to come back to your question: It should be possible but it would just be trigered if you really resize it by the mouse. And that was not really i wanted.

Thank you anyway ;)