GUI with or without GUIDE

I am making a GUI. I would like to make it programatically (not using GUIDE) because not GUIDE GUI files make alot more sense, I can read them and understand what is happenig. Am I going to miss out on something by making GUI without GUIDE? I'm not doing anything too complicated: grabbing some frames from a video camera displaying them and doing some math with them. I hope compile the final product into its own app. Am I going to encounter some problem I am not currently seeing by avoiding GUIDE?

[Stephen23]

See Rik's excellent tutorial:

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/483657-how-to-create-a-gui#answer_394878

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

You can do it but it might be a LOT more work. Let's say you have two dozen controls on your figure. You're going to have to set up the size, font, callbacks, etc. for all those. That's a lot of typing. I don't know why you find it easier to look at code with dozens of uicontrol() statements than just looking at the callback functions that GUIDE makes. You just look at the m-file you know - you don't have to open the .fig file and look at what's in there.

I bet I could get a GUI up and running in a tenth the time it would take you.

[jw]

I'm impressed that you can write my GUI so much faster than I can.

I believe GUIDE stores information in the .fig file, programatically created GUIs store everything in the .m file.

My question does not concern the time it takes to make the GUI. I am wondering if there are functional differences between the two (assuming no discernible runtime difference) when compiling them into applications.

[Image Analyst]

In theory, you can build a GUI manually creating each component one at a time and setting all the properties and callbacks and it should behave the same as if you'd built it quicker in GUIDE. Go ahead and try it. Maybe if you have a really simple GUI you won't have to spend too long.

[Walter Roberson]

In any situation in which you need multiple figures, or you have need to share a portion of screen real estate between multiple controls (that is, it is not enough to just make a control invisible when not in use because you need the area for other things as well) -- then in those cases, GUIDE can be a big nuisance. Likewise, if you need to resize dynamically for reasons such as permitting the user to change font size, then GUIDE can be a PITA.

GUIDE is convenient for cases where everything can be in a fixed position and fixed size and where your idea of a fancy GUI is limited to turning controls visible or not or enabling them or not.

GUIs made in GUIDE do not have any facilities that you could not program without GUIDE.

[Image Analyst]

So, another option is App Designer. App Designer has lots of advantages so I thought I would switch to that. But after using it, I went back to GUIDE. The main problem with App Designer is that the dialog box editor and the code are in the same app (App Designer) but there is no ability to do stuff in the command window, no abilty to open up other files, and no ability to see variable values in the workspace panel because all those capabilities are back in MATLAB and it's a hassle to have to switch back and forth between MATLAB and App Designer when debugging a program. With GUIDE, once you run the program, everything (code, command window, workspace, variable editor, - everything) is right there in MATLAB. No switching back and forth is needed like it is in App Designer.