Yair, is there any way to have the menu remain open after clicking it? Suppose you wanted to have a menu with a bunch of booleans, and you wanted to be able to quickly change the state of a bunch of them without doing click, reopen, click, reopen….

Thanks,
John

@John – I don’t believe that you can prevent the menu from closing. But if you trap the menu item’s callback, you could possibly immediately reopen the menu programmatically, as explained in the ^[16] of this mini-series.

Thanks Yair, I’ll try that.

Hi
You have nice web site and it is very interisting (Thanks)
I tried to insert an icon in Save file menu according to your doc.

figure(1)
jFrame    = get(handle(gcf),'JavaFrame')
jMenuBar  = jFrame.fHG1Client.getMenuBar;
jFileMenu = jMenuBar.getComponent(0)
jMER      = jFileMenu.getMenuComponent(1)
jMER.setIcon(javax.swing.ImageIcon(im2java(A)));

But when MATLAB
reach to below line of my command line :
jMER = jFileMenu.getMenuComponent(1)
it set a message that it is:

Error using com.mathworks.hg.peer.MenuPeer$FigureMJMenu/getMenuComponent
Java exception occurred:
java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: No such child: 1
	at java.awt.Container.getComponent(Unknown Source)
	at javax.swing.JMenu.getMenuComponent(Unknown Source)

Can you help me please?

@Morteza – as I explained in the ^[17], “the Save menu-item reference can only be retrieved after opening the File menu at least once earlier; otherwise, an exception will be thrown when trying to access the menu item“. Read there for additional details and workaround.

Hi Dear Yair Altman.
It work….
Thank so much

Hi Dear Yair
I try to put the icons for uicontextmenu in my program but I couldn’t. Can you help me.

B.cm = uicontextmenu;
B.um(1) = uimenu(B.cm,'label','Statistical val.',...
                'Callback', {@BM1_call,B},'foregroundcolor',[0.2863 0.0667 0.0157]);   
B.um(2) = uimenu(B.cm,'label','Plot ...','Separator','on',...
                'Callback', {@BM2_call,B},'foregroundcolor',[0.2863 0.0667 0.0157]);

Thanks.

@Morteza – You could try to use HTML images, as explained ^[18]. But perhaps a better way is to use Java icons in a Java context-menu, rather than a Matlab uicontextmenu.

If you have additional programming requests, please contact me by email for personal consulting.

Hi dear Yair
I try to put an image in uicontextmenu by html functions.
I use the : src=”” (function that shows image)

txtimg = 'Color-Map'; 
uimenu(F.cm,'label',txtimg,'Callback',{@FM1_call,F});

Even I put the root directory path like :
but nothing happened and just cross sign is shown.
but when I execute my GUI, MATLAB does not show the image in uicontextmenu.
Can you help me?

@Morteza – this will be answered in my ^[19], so stay tuned…

Hi Dear Yair
I’ll follow your articles…
Thanks anyway

Hi Dear Yair
last part I asked about put the image using of html format.
I use the pwd function in MATLAB and I found there is diffrent root path between Windows and html.
in windows pwd : C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2012a\bin
but in html format : ^[20]
‘/’ insted of ‘\’.
but when I try to do this in MATLAB but nothing appear!!!
Is there something that I should use extra?
Thank you so much

Hi Dear Yair
I try to open link of your E-mail from your web-site but I couldn’t.
So,I have a question about subject that I know it is not related to this page article, then excuse me.
Is it possible to write a program after make it as stand-alone application (*.exe) by compiler’s MATLAB ,at specific time delete itself to prevent extra use?
Thanks

i am amin from iran

maybe use pause …it is possible

Hi, Yair
Your website is so helpful! I followed some of the matlab customization on your website, now I wonder if I could change the font used in the MATLAB, like I tried something like:

 
com.mathworks.services.Prefs.setFontPref('MenuFont',java.awt.Font('Ubuntu',0,13))

but nothing happened.
Thanks.

@Shuhao – after modifying the prefs you need to restart Matlab. You need to ensure (of course) that the relevant preference name exists.

Thanks for the quick reply. Is there a way to see what are all the relevant preference names?

Of course – simply open the preferences file in a text editor

edit([prefdir '/matlab.prf'])

Haha, I see. Thanks a lot. I have looked into it but found no ‘MenuFont’. Guess there is no easy workaround within MATLAB to change the font size of the menu then.

Hi,
I’ve tried your code:

jarFile = fullfile(matlabroot,'/java/jar/mwt.jar');
iconsFolder = '/com/mathworks/mwt/resources/';
iconURI = ['jar:file:/' jarFile '!' iconsFolder 'save.gif'];
iconURI = java.net.URL(iconURI);  % not necessary for external files
jSave.setIcon(javax.swing.ImageIcon(iconURI));

There is an error on the last line returning this message:
Undefined variable “jSave” or class “jSave.setIcon”.

I’m working on Matlab 2012…

Sébastien

This is article #3 in a series. You can’t run code from article 3 without reading articles 1,2 before… jSave is defined in the previous part of this series.

[…] having been published in what was then called the Desktop Blog (renamed MATLAB Spoken Here since Ken and Mike have left MathWorks and the blog focus has […]

I’m trying to insert an icon like in your post, but I can not. Could you send by email an example that is running? ie, for me to do ctrl+c ctrl+v. So I will be able to understand better.

@Sandro – I would be happy to provide you with my professional consulting services via email. Send me an email via the link at the top-right of this page if you are interested.

Hi Yair,
the great code indeed, it worked perfectly fine, but in R2014b it does not work any more.

 
hFig = figure;
jFrame = get(handle(hFig),'JavaFrame'); % gives warning
% Warning: figure JavaFrame property will be obsoleted in a future release. For more information see
% the JavaFrame resource on the MathWorks web site. 
jMenuBar = jFrame.fHG1Client.getMenuBar; % gives error
% No appropriate method, property, or field fHG1Client for class com.mathworks.hg.peer.HG2FigurePeer.

is there any way around?

ohh, the name has been changed to fHG2Client, why and when????
the following code should be used

jMenuBar = jFrame.fHG2Client.getMenuBar; 

@Ilya – I described this over a year ago, in my ^[21] article.

@Yair – thank you for keeping things updated, it really helps to keep the code running 🙂

Hi Yair,
thanks for this interesting possibilities.

I was able to implement icons (and tooltips) for my menus this way. Instead of getMenuBar() I use findjobj to get the handles.

Now I also want to implement icons for some uimenus that are childs of uicontextmenus. Unfortunately findjobj seems not to find uicontextmenus (“No Java reference was found for the requested handle, probably because it is still invisible”) even if it is opened twice. So I look for a child uimenu and then use getParent(). But findjobj seems not to find the uimenu entries that are childs of the uicontextmenu but the ones of the main menu. When I “force” to look only for the one searched by using the ‘property’ option with the tag no handle is found.

Can you help using findjobj to find uicontextmenus or uimenus that are childs of uicontextmenus?

Best regards
André

Hey Yair,

I am creating a GUI in MATLAB 2014a. Using you findjobj utility, I am trying to change the background color of the menu bar and the sub-menus. For some reason none of the backgrounds will change color, but the text will. The menu bar seems to be originated from the Windows environment, but the sub-menus appear to be MATLAB based. Do you know why none of the backgrounds will change color?

Best,
Adam Foltz

@Adam – on some modern platforms, the menu items’ bgcolor is dynamically set by the system and cannot easily be overridden. In other words,

jSave.setBackground(java.awt.Color.yellow)

has no visible effect.

However, we can still use HTML/CSS, as follows:

padding = [' &' repmat(' ',1,30)];  % space padding to extend the background area
label = ['Save' padding]; 
jSave.setText(label)

how can change oreintation menus and uitable to right – left

Hi Yair,

I would like to make the labels editable in the menu itself. For example that you can richt-click on the word ‘Save’, a box pops up where you can select ‘rename’, and that the word ‘Save’ becomes editable. maybe with an editbox style uicontrol at the exact location of the word ‘Save’. Is there a way to do this? What i do now is, i use an inputdlg box. But that is less userfriendly. Below is a function that shows and hides lines in a figure based on their displayname where i’d like to use this.

function showhide(h,a)
   f = findall(gcf,'label','show/hide')
   if numel(f)
      s2=findall(f,'position',2)
      if numel(s2)
         s2.Separator='on'
      end
      if strcmp(h.Label,'add')
         str = inputdlg('enter a string');
         uimenu(f,'label',str{1},'Callback',@showhide);
      else
         l = findall(gcf,'type','line');
         c = char(setdiff({'on' 'off'},get(h,'checked')));
         set(h,'Checked',c);
         set(l(~cellfun('isempty',strfind(get(l,'DisplayName'),h.Label))),'visible',c,'handlevisibility',c);
      end
   else
      f=uimenu(gcf,'label','show/hide');
      uimenu(f,'label','add','Callback',@showhide);
   end
end

Hi Yair,
The article is very helpful.
I tried to execute the commands in a single m-file programatically but got an error.
The error occurred was

Java exception occurred:
java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: No such child: 0
	at java.awt.Container.getComponent(Unknown Source)
	at javax.swing.JMenu.getMenuComponent(Unknown Source)

if I execute the code one line at a time I did not face any issue .
Could you please help me with the issue

@Sneha – as I explained ^[22], the menu needs to be opened once in order for its menu items to become visible.

Hi Yair,
Apologies for my late reply. I did not attach the code previously sorry for that
The below is the code written

jf = get(hObject,'JavaFrame');
jmb = jf.fHG2Client.getMenuBar;
jFileMenu = jmb.getComponent(0);
jFileMenu.doClick;  %% open menu
jFileMenu.doClick; % close the menu
jvalue1 = jFileMenu.getMenuComponent(0);
jvalue2=jFileMenu.getMenuComponent(1);
jvalue3 = jFileMenu.getMenuComponent(2);

So this code if I execute line by line I am able to get tool tip messages but i run code as a .m file I gt that error

@Sneha – add a short drawnow; pause(0.01) between the calls to jFileMenu.doClick and the call to jFileMenu.getMenuComponent.

More information:
* ^[23]
* ^[24]

Hi Yair,
I am writing MATLAB with using Java in my program; And I use RolloverIcon to set for my button with a image, but when I move mouse into button, my button does not show the image set.
I need a advice from Mr. Yair !

Thanks

Using RolloverIcon requires setting RolloverEnabled to true (default=false):

jMenuItem.setRolloverEnabled(true);
jMenuItem.setRolloverIcon(icon1);
jMenuItem.setRolloverSelectedIcon(icon2);