HTML support in Matlab uicomponents

March 21, 2009 69 Comments

A common feature of Java Swing components is their acceptance of HTML (and CSS) for any of their JLabels. Since all Matlab uicontrols are based on Swing-derived components (an undocumented aspect), this Swing feature automatically applies to Matlab uicontrol as well. Whatever can be formatted in HTML (font, color, size, …) is inherently available in Matlab controls. Note that HTML tags do not need to be closed (<tag>…</tag>), although it is good practice to close them properly.
For example, let us create a multi-colored Matlab listbox:

uicontrol('Style','list', 'Position',[10,10,70,70], 'String', ...
{'<HTML><FONT color="red">Hello</Font></html>', 'world', ...
 '<html><font style="font-family:impact;color:green"><i>What a', ...
 '<Html><FONT color="blue" face="Comic Sans MS">nice day!</font>'});

Listbox with HTML'ed items — Listbox with HTML colored items

Menus and tooltips can also be customized in a similar fashion:

uicontrol('Style','popup', 'Position',[10,10,150,100], 'String', ...
{'<HTML><BODY bgcolor="green">green background</BODY></HTML>', ...
 '<HTML><FONT color="red" size="+2">Large red font</FONT></HTML>', ...
 '<HTML><BODY bgcolor="#FF00FF"><PRE>fixed-width font'});

Multi-line HTML'ed tooltip

Figure main menu modified with HTML items

69 Responses

Ashish Sadanandan March 26, 2009 at 16:22 Reply

Thanks for starting this blog Yair. It’s fun, and often necessary, to mess with Java directly when doing GUI programming in Matlab and this blog should help a lot with that.

About displaying HTML in uicontrols, is there a way to do that with static text? Simply changing the style parameter to text in your examples does not work.

Regards,
Ashish.

Yair Altman March 26, 2009 at 23:31 Reply

This is a good point, Ashish – text uicontrols use a class (com.mathworks.hg.peer.LabelPeer$1 which extends com.mathworks.hg.peer.utils.MultilineLabel) that de-HTMLs the content string for some reason that I do not understanding.

Instead of using uicontrol(‘style’,’text’,…) you could use javacomponent(‘javax.swing.JLabel’), which uses a standard HTML-compliant label (the string is controlled via its ‘Text’ property).

Yair

Ashish Sadanandan March 27, 2009 at 10:53

Perfect! That works, but I ended up using a JButton instead because I could define an ActionPerformedCallback for it, the only way I could figure out to respond to user clicks on a JLabel was to add a mouse listener and I had no idea how to do that on the Matlab side. This is the code I’m using:

hText = javacomponent( 'javax.swing.JButton' );
set( hText, 'text', '<a href="https://undocumentedmatlab.com/blog/html-support-in-matlab-uicomponents" rel="nofollow">Select Variable</a>' );
set( hText, 'BorderPainted', false );
set( hText, 'ContentAreaFilled', false );
set( hText, 'FocusPainted', false );  
set( hText, 'Opaque', true );
set( hText, 'ActionPerformedCallback', @myCallback );

Now, the next question is, is there a way to make it behave like a HyperLink on hovering i.e. change the cursor to the hand icon, like it does in a web browser?

Yair Altman March 28, 2009 at 10:47
Ah, Ashish – this one’s easy: to change the cursor to a hand icon, simply do this:
hText.setCursor(java.awt.Cursor.getPredefinedCursor(java.awt.Cursor.HAND_CURSOR));
hText.setCursor(java.awt.Cursor.getPredefinedCursor(java.awt.Cursor.HAND_CURSOR));
Note that in order to prevent memory leaks, it is advisable to use the jObject.setProperty() or set(handle(jObject),'Property',...) formats, instead of set(jObject,'Property',...).

Yair
Ashish Sadanandan March 30, 2009 at 09:50

Thanks for the tip about using the SET function, I was digging around a little bit more about that and came up with this link:
http://mathforum.org/kb/message.jspa?messageID=5950839&tstart=0

Is what he says about explicitly setting java handles to [] true? I’m not doing that at the moment, but I could stuff all the java handles into GUIDATA and set them to empty in the DeleteFcn callback for the figure containing the Java components.

Thanks again for answering all my questions, pretty soon you’ll be able to create a new blog post from just these questions 🙂

Oh and I have some feedback about the website, it’s minor and nothing that a text editor can’t fix in a few seconds, but the code that you post cannot be copy-pasted into the Matlab command line directly because of the ‘, “, … etc. characters which instead of the ASCII versions are some HTML versions. The … for instance is a single character instead of 3 .s

Alex F December 10, 2014 at 06:18 Reply

I need exactly what Ashish needed almost 6 years ago and it’s working (HTML doesn’t work for uicontrol(‘style’, ‘text’)). My question is how do I change the size of the text? I was trying to access the method setFont method under handle.Font but it’s not accessible. How do I change the font size? Thanks.

Yair Altman December 10, 2014 at 06:26
@Alex – assuming you are talking about the Java component and not the Matlab uicontrol, you can do this:
jLabel = javacomponent(...); newFont = java.awt.Font('Helvetica', java.awt.Font.PLAIN, 12); % font name, style, size jLabel.setFont(newFont);
jLabel = javacomponent(...); newFont = java.awt.Font('Helvetica', java.awt.Font.PLAIN, 12); % font name, style, size jLabel.setFont(newFont);

Alex F December 10, 2014 at 06:35 Reply

Yair, thank you for your demon reply. At times it gives the impression you are an 24hr AI software working. 🙂 I used methods(jLabel) yesterday but didn’t show setFont, neither I could tab-complete it. Not sure why. Next time I will assume is there whether I see it or not. Thanks a million.
Alex F December 10, 2014 at 06:36 Reply

Sorry. It should have read ….. demon speed* reply….

Yair Altman December 10, 2014 at 06:38

Next time, use my uiinspect and/or checkClass utilities.

Ashish Sadanandan March 30, 2009 at 09:55 Reply

Forgot to ask one more question I had. I create the JButton using javacomponent and then call the handle function before setting the ActionPerformedCallback

hText = javacomponent( ‘javax.swing.JButton’, pos, hPanel );
hText.setText( ‘MyButton’ );
hText = handle( hText, ‘CallbackProperties’ );
set( hText, ‘ActionPerformedCallback’, @VarSelectCallback );

It seems I can move the line containing the call to the HANDLE function right after creating the JButton and then call all the methods the same way as using the handle returned by javacomponent. Is this true? Are the 2 handles equivalent (other than the fact that you should use the one returned by the HANDLE call to set the callback)?

Yair Altman March 30, 2009 at 12:48 Reply

Deleting the java handles (or explicitly setting to []) is really important only for very heavy components (JTable/JTree with lots of data etc.) or for components that keep getting replaced with new instances for programmatic reasons. Otherwise it’s just not worth your programming time…

Thanks for the feedback about the code snippets font – I fixed it and you can now copy-paste directly into Matlab.

Your observation about handle() is correct. handle() is a large undocumented topic in Matlab which is on my TODO list. Basically, the handle() object is a Matlab wrapper for the Java reference, and whatever you can do with the Java ref you can do with the handle, with some differences that I’ll detail separately (probably over several posts since the topic is large).

Dani April 12, 2009 at 11:08 Reply

Can this be used to right align text (or center) in uicontrols? On windows the HorizontalAlignment property only works for text and edit boxes. However, I could not find a html instruction that would do it (p align=right…)

Yair Altman April 12, 2009 at 13:49 Reply

@Dani – the “normal” way to do this is to use HorizontalAlignment. In theory, you could use the style=”text-align:right;” CSS directive. However, it appears that the Java engine does not honor this CSS directive (although it does honor font size/color etc.). it doesn’t hurt to try, just don’t be surprised if it is ignored.

Changing Matlab’s Command Window colors - part 2 | Undocumented Matlab May 9, 2009 at 12:15 Reply

[…] the Command-Window (like Swing’s standard JTextArea of which CW is an instance) does not automatically support HTML formatting as most other uicontrols. In fact, CW’s default Document object, which holds all the text-area’s text and font style information […]
Spicing up Matlab uicontrol tooltips | Undocumented Matlab May 27, 2009 at 12:16 Reply

[…] how to use tooltips in Matlab GUI. In one of this blog’s very first posts, I described how HTML can easily be used with Matlab uicontrols. Let’s now combine these ideas to show how HTML support can easily be used to spice-up the […]
Jason McMains July 20, 2009 at 10:53 Reply

Yair, I was messing around with the JLabel HTML, and I have a few different links within it. Is there a way to allow for following these links?

Yair Altman July 20, 2009 at 12:45 Reply

@Jason – you can indeed follow hyperlinks. For a few examples, take a look at my UIINSPECT utility on the File Exchange. Specifically, see the link at the very bottom of the figure window, and also the links within the methods pane on the top-left.

Jason McMains July 21, 2009 at 10:07
Yair, Thanks for the suggestion. Because I have multiple links, I ended up using a browser instance and inserting the html like this:
jBrowserPanel=com.mathworks.mlwidgets.html.HTMLBrowserPanel; browser = javacomponent(jBrowserPanel,browser_position,gcf); html = browser.HTMLRenderer; html.setHtmlText(message);
jBrowserPanel=com.mathworks.mlwidgets.html.HTMLBrowserPanel; browser = javacomponent(jBrowserPanel,browser_position,gcf); html = browser.HTMLRenderer; html.setHtmlText(message);

Jason McMains August 19, 2009 at 06:50 Reply
Just to show another usage of this topic, I’m using it as a font name chooser:
c=listfonts; c=cellfun(@(c) ['<html><Font face="' c '">' c '</font></html>'],c,'uni',false); set(findobj('tag','FontName'),'string',c,'value',1)
c=listfonts; c=cellfun(@(c) ['<html><Font face="' c '">' c '</font></html>'],c,'uni',false); set(findobj('tag','FontName'),'string',c,'value',1)
Customizing Matlab labels | Undocumented Matlab November 11, 2009 at 16:06 Reply

[…] axes text labels that support Tex/Latex, and unlike other uicontrols like buttons or listboxes that support HTML, text labels (uicontrol(’Style’,’text’,…)) do not support text formatting […]

Prasath January 6, 2010 at 05:14 Reply

An example for Jbutton usage in MATLAB

function test_javaButton
import javax.swing.JButton;
hfig = figure();
button = JButton('Close');
[hcomponent, hcontainer] = javacomponent(button, [], hfig);
set(hcontainer,'units','normalized','position',[.1 .1 .5 .5])
set(button,'ActionPerformedCallback',@buttonClosePressed);
return;
 
function buttonClosePressed(handle,event)
%doSomething();
disp('test');
return;

cintix January 29, 2010 at 07:37 Reply

Hi,
Is it possible to assign the color of one plot to what is written inside the listbox?I explain my application: I have an axes and a listbox, when I plot different lines, in the listbox it is shown Plot1,Plot2… and I would like those strings to have the color of its corresponding plotted line…is it possible? I just cant get it…
Thanks in advance

Yair Altman January 30, 2010 at 09:41 Reply

@cintix – yes it is possible. You just need to remember how HTML colors are specified. Here is a very simple example that you can modify for your own needs:

% Let's modify Plot3 for example:
color = get(hLine(3),'color');  % => [123,234,45]
colorStr = sprintf('%d,',int16(color));  % extra ',' is ok
listStrings{3} = ['<html><font color="rgb(' colorStr ')">Plot3</font></html>'];
set(hListbox,'string',listStrings);

Yair

Tabbed panes – uitab and relatives | Undocumented Matlab June 23, 2010 at 11:53 Reply

[…] remember that HTML is accepted just as in any other Swing-based label […]
Fil July 27, 2010 at 09:57 Reply

Dear all,

Was just wondering if using this technique I would be able to make some options in a popupmenu change colour and more importantly unselectable?

Thanks for your invaluable help with this website.

Fil.

Yair Altman July 27, 2010 at 10:41 Reply

@Fil – You can use HTML to define separate item colors (see the example in the main article above), but you can’t define unselectable items.

Fil July 29, 2010 at 01:21

Thanks Yair,

So there is no way to create a popupmenu with unselectable options using Matlab or Java?

Thanks for your help,
Fil
Yair Altman July 29, 2010 at 09:29

You can use HTML to set popup menu items to gray-italic, but you can’t prevent the user from clicking these items. In your callback, simply ignore any clicks made on your “uselectable” items.

Customizing uitree nodes – part 1 | Undocumented Matlab August 25, 2010 at 11:34 Reply

[…] names share the same HTML support feature as all Java Swing labels. Therefore, we can specify font size/face/color, bold, italic, underline, […]
Aurélien June 23, 2011 at 02:43 Reply
Hi Yair,

Just a note about using HTML within uicontrols:

I use a lot of HTML code for my uicontrols . The only drawback I have found is when you decide to set enable off one of them. For example :
f = uimenu('Label','Workspace'); h_ui = uimenu(f,'Label','New Figure','enable','off');
f = uimenu('Label','Workspace'); h_ui = uimenu(f,'Label','New Figure','enable','off');
As the ForegroundColor of “New Figure” label is still in red it is not clear that the label is disabled. I would expect to see the label in grey.

Currently I remove HTML tags as follows:
set(rr,'Label',regexprep(get(rr,'Label'),' ]*>', ''),'enable','off')
set(rr,'Label',regexprep(get(rr,'Label'),' ]*>', ''),'enable','off')
Note: The regular expression does not display correctly on your site, I am using this one from this tech-note:
How can I read an HTML file into MATLAB and discard the HTML tags?

Except this drawback , using HTML in uicontrols is easy and makes GUIs to be more pretty.

Aurélien

Yair Altman June 13, 2012 at 03:58 Reply

It’s a bit late to answer, but for the record this is a known bug in the JVM (i.e., not a Matlab bug). This bug’s webpage contains several workarounds; the full fix is in JVM 1.7, whose Matlab integration date is currently unknown.

Sorry for the belated answer – it’s in my book (p. 109) so apparently I knew about this for over a year. I’m not sure why I didn’t answer here immediately…

LL July 22, 2011 at 10:46 Reply

Hi,
How to pass a variable in the element?
var
for example: I have
var = 10;

Yair Altman July 23, 2011 at 10:40 Reply

@LL – your question is not understood. Be more specific

Uitable cell colors | Undocumented Matlab October 28, 2011 at 02:37 Reply

[…] have used HTML to format the header labels into two rows, to enable compact columns. I have already described using HTML formatting in Matlab controls in several articles on this website. […]
David Goldsmith July 12, 2012 at 12:26 Reply

Is it only uicontrols that are derived from Java Swing components? If not, how can I detect if a given object is so-derived? E.g., are uipanel’s so-derived? (I’d like to use html tags in a uipanel title; is using a uicontrol(‘Type’, ‘text’) the only way to achieve this? Can I make such an object the value of the uipanel’s Title property, or do I have to basically make the control a separate child of the panel and place it manually in a title-like position?) Thanks!

Yair Altman July 12, 2012 at 14:23 Reply

@David – in fact, the uipanel title is actually a simple text uicontrol that is a child of the panel and placed in an appropriate position. You can get its handle (and modify it accordingly) using the hidden uipanel property TitleHandle. You can read more about this and see some ideas of customizing the panel title in an article I posted in 2010: https://undocumentedmatlab.com/blog/panel-level-uicontrols/

Text uicontrols do not understand HTML, but you can replace the label with a Java-based label that does. See https://undocumentedmatlab.com/blog/customizing-matlab-labels/

Finally, you can always elect to use a JPanel directly, rather than a uipanel – JPanels inherently support HTML in their titles, and also enable rounded corners, which is a nice feature that is lacking in uipanels.

To find out if there is an underlying Java component to a GUI control, use the findjobj utility. You’ll find that there is no such Java control that underlies uipanels.
David Goldsmith July 12, 2012 at 17:48 Reply

Great, thanks!

Emmanuel Alap August 9, 2012 at 08:14 Reply

Amazing! However, after trying this on a little experiment (a GUI-based Scientific Calculator), I came across a little problem – how do you implement a delete function on special characters in HTML (such as pi which is &#960)?
I have a pushbutton which deletes regular characters (numbers and letters) on an MJLabel one-by-one using this code

htmlString = calcu.wt5.getText;
textString = html2txt(htmlString);
if strcmp(textString,'') == 1
   calcu.wt5.setText(txt2html(''));
else
   ss=char(textString);
   lxt = length(textString);
   textString = ss(1:lxt-1);
   calcu.wt5.setText(txt2html(textString));
end

The thing is, I can now use special characters (thanks to your tutorials) on static textboxes. But everytime I use my delete command above, the underlying html code is revealed.

Before delete:
&#960

After single-instance delete:
&#96

eric September 20, 2012 at 07:43 Reply
does anyone know how to make accepted a code like :
set((...),'string','[html] blah blah [img src="../img.png"] [/html]');
set((...),'string','[html] blah blah [img src="../img.png"] [/html]');
(angle brackets instead of [ ])

The interesting thing for me would be including some images in my text.
Thanks !

Yair Altman September 21, 2012 at 04:59 Reply

@Eric – you got the HTML img URL syntax wrong, that’s why you don’t see the image. I explained this issue here. Many people seem to have this difficulty so I think I’ll write a dedicated article about it shortly – keep following this blog.

Note that HTML images only work for “real” uicontrols, but not for text labels that are created via the uicontrol function. I explained a workaround for using HTML in text labels here.

eric September 26, 2012 at 02:31

thank you Yair !

Images in Matlab uicontrols & labels | Undocumented Matlab October 17, 2012 at 11:02 Reply

[…] A couple of weeks ago, a reader here asked how to integrate images in Matlab labels. I see quite a few queries about this […]
uiinspect | Undocumented Matlab January 24, 2013 at 07:31 Reply

[…] The illusion is achieved using Matlab’s HTML formatting, where the part of the label string consisting of the class name is underlined. […]
dev March 14, 2013 at 05:31 Reply

Hello Sir,
I want to display dicom file path using uitree by dicom file series wise

Yair Altman March 14, 2013 at 05:57 Reply
Take a look at my series on using Matlab uitree

You may also be interested in using propertiesGUI to present the DICOM meta-data information using
propertiesgui(dicominfo(filename))
propertiesgui(dicominfo(filename))

Rich-contents log panel | Undocumented Matlab September 18, 2013 at 07:01 Reply

[…] have often noted in past articles that most Matlab uicontrols support HTML formatting. We can use a listbox control for our log panel, and use HTML formatting for the various log […]
Eike B. November 12, 2013 at 01:32 Reply

Hello,

first thank you for your great blog. It helps a lot!

Right now I struggle a little with the listbox. I try to generate items that contain multirow text using the “br” tag. Right now the listbox ist not extending the item height so the items are not completely visible. Is there a way to tell the listbox to autosize the items or do I have to somehow manually do that?

Thanks in advance and best regards

Eike

Yair Altman November 12, 2013 at 01:48 Reply

You need to do it manually

Yvo G. December 18, 2013 at 07:32 Reply

hi,

i’m searching for a method to change the background color of the whole popupmenu window.
i learned hear how to change the colors of the text and the direct background of the text,

but i want to change the color of a whole popup-window when i click on the the button right.
the matlab control offers only the color changings in the untouched menu window, but not in the whole opened one. this is is always white. eve if i change the colors of the text and its background with this html-method, what really works fine, all the rest background in the menu stays white.

is there a way to change it ?

Yair Altman December 18, 2013 at 08:38 Reply

I do not know how to do it directly from Matlab. I think you will need to do it using a customized Java control. See here.

Robert Cumming May 26, 2014 at 11:47 Reply

For your info I have added a FEX submission for converting str2html. for use in uicontrols and uimenus etc….

I hope you find it useful!
Hannes September 9, 2014 at 18:38 Reply

Hello,

Is it possible to highlight different entries of a listbox separately?

I am looking for a way to be able to (1) highlight the entry my mouse is currently hovering at and (2) at the same time always keep the currently SELECTED entry highlighted (in a different color) aswell?

And I am not looking for chaning the color of the string via HTML. I’d like to have the whole “line” highlighted.

Thank you in advance!

Hannes

Hannes September 10, 2014 at 03:32 Reply

I figured out a workaround. I have some space on the right of the listbox. I placed a simple static text there, without any string but a certain backgroundcolor. And every time my MouseHoverCallback from the listbox executes I update the y-position of the static text in to the corresponding currently hovered index in a discrete manner.
This is what it looks like: http://hpewd.dorado.uberspace.de/listbox_example.png. The blue-highlighted entry is the currently selected one.

That provides a simple indicator. However, this is just a workaround. Maybe someone knows a more proper take on this.

Rendering of colored listbox text using HTML in deployed application - Tech Magazine October 28, 2015 at 05:01 Reply

[…] found how to do it using HTML code, as an undocumented feature, here. Basically the code, copied/pasted from Yair’s website, looks as […]
Aaron December 2, 2015 at 08:18 Reply

I am trying to write Latin characters in a uimenu, such as: á or ñ. However, the ‘&’ symbol is reserved for uimenus to allow mnemonic access to items and so doesn’t display the characters correctly. Do you know a way around this? Is Java required for this?

Thanks in advance.

Aaron December 2, 2015 at 08:24 Reply

I was able to fix this by putting an ‘&’ before the string as well as using it as an html character.

Momo July 1, 2016 at 17:46 Reply

Is it possible to integrate CSS to Matlab Guide ?

I am trying to create one of the buttons here : https://codepen.io/bartekd/pen/qFsDf in my Matlab Guide figure. Is it feasible ?

Thank you in advance.

Yair Altman July 1, 2016 at 18:04 Reply
@Momo – yes, you can include CSS in your controls, even those created using GUIDE. Simply update the control’s String property to include the relevant HTML info. For example:
hButton.String = '<html><div style="color:red; text-decoration:line-through;">Click me!';
hButton.String = '<html><div style="color:red; text-decoration:line-through;">Click me!';
Note that not all CSS directives are supported by Java Swing (which is the underlying mechanism that parses the HTML/CSS directives).

Momo July 1, 2016 at 19:23 Reply

@Yair Thank you for your reply.

I have been trying to include a css file for a while but I always get the html code as a string on the button. Can you help me with this issue ? Please refer to the example below (HTML code and it’s corresponding CSS code).

HTML CODE: <a href="#" rel="nofollow">green</a>
 
CSS CODE: .myButton {
	background-color:#44c767;
	-moz-border-radius:28px;
	-webkit-border-radius:28px;
	border-radius:28px;
	border:1px solid #18ab29;
	display:inline-block;
	cursor:pointer;
	color:#ffffff;
	font-family:Arial;
	font-size:17px;
	padding:16px 31px;
	text-decoration:none;
	text-shadow:0px 1px 0px #2f6627;
}
.myButton:hover {
	background-color:#5cbf2a;
}
.myButton:active {
	position:relative;
	top:1px;
}

Momo July 1, 2016 at 19:26 Reply

Please refer to this : http://www.bestcssbuttongenerator.com/

Yair Altman July 2, 2016 at 22:17

@Momo – you cannot include external CSS files. You need to specify the CSS directives directly in the HTML string as I have shown above.

Meade August 19, 2016 at 18:57 Reply
Is it possible to change the horizontal & vertical alignment of the pushbutton string with CSS tags?
I see that most directives work, but I don’t see any effect from:
hButton.String = '<html><div style="text-align:right">My RIGHT ALIGNED string';
hButton.String = '<html><div style="text-align:right">My RIGHT ALIGNED string';
Much thanks for all you do!

Yair Altman August 23, 2016 at 20:05 Reply
@Meade – You can use an HTML string such as this:
pxPos = getpixelposition(hButton); hButton.String = ['<html><div width="' num2str(pxPos(3)-20) 'px" align="right">text']; % button margins use 20px
pxPos = getpixelposition(hButton); hButton.String = ['<html><div width="' num2str(pxPos(3)-20) 'px" align="right">text']; % button margins use 20px
A better solution is to use the findjobj utility as explained here. This would be independent of the button’s pixel-size and would work even when the button is resized.

Meade August 30, 2016 at 14:20

@Yair

This is a great work-around!
I’m guessing by your suggestion that Matlab doesn’t interpret any of the ‘align’ commands for text in naked Matlab uibuttons?
As for suggestion two, I’m very familiar with your great |findjobj| utility. I use it all the time. I was hoping to avoid jButtons if possible, but they might be best choice afterall.
Many thanks!
meade
Yair Altman August 30, 2016 at 16:37

@Meade – it’s not Matlab that ignores the align directive but rather the underlying Java Swing behavior, which snugly fits the text in the center of the button, and of course aligning text within a tight-fitting box has no effect. The workaround I suggested simply forces Swing to use a non-tightly-fitting boundary box, within which you can indeed align the text. It’s a pretty standard HTML/CSS behavior workaround, and any decent web developer could probably find several similar alternatives.

darsh March 24, 2017 at 04:19 Reply

while using html in Matlab uitable cell to change color , can I at the same time also specify alignment to centre or left? I don’t know html and am trying to work out if this is possible or not
data(1,1)='<html><font bgcolor=#FF8800>1</font></html>’

Yair Altman March 26, 2017 at 21:38 Reply
@darsh – yes it is possible using <div> or <tr>/<td>, but this has some drawbacks:
hButton.String = '<html><tr><td width=9999 align=left>Left-aligned'
hButton.String = '<html><tr><td width=9999 align=left>Left-aligned'
Instead, I suggest using the text alignment methods/properties of the underlying Java control: https://undocumentedmatlab.com/blog/button-customization

Chaithya G R September 18, 2017 at 12:43 Reply

Hey Yair,
Thanks for such an awesome blog… I never knew such great capabilities existed, most of which i really needed…
Thanks again..
K Xu October 31, 2019 at 18:03 Reply

Trouble is, when there are “<" in the string, they are not shown in Matlab! Any ideas to fix it?

Martin Lechner November 6, 2019 at 06:26 Reply
For html strings you have to replace the special characters with the entity names (e.g. replace
```
'<' by '&lt;' or 
'>' by '&gt;'
```
).
For a description to entity names and a list of the important ones see https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_entities.asp
A full list character entity names can be seen in https://dev.w3.org/html5/html-author/charref.

HTML tags such as <b> or <i> are accepted.
Wrap code fragments inside <pre lang="matlab"> tags, like this:

<pre lang="matlab">
a = magic(3);
disp(sum(a))
</pre>

I reserve the right to edit/delete comments (read the site policies).
Not all comments will be answered. You can always email me (altmany at gmail) for private consulting.

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Sunham (3 days 3 hours ago): This is an old article, but the issue persists even in 2023. 2023a: z = mat2cell(1:1e6,1,repmat(1,1,1e 6)); f = @() cellfun(‘isempty’, z); g = @() cellfun(@isempty,z);...
Yair Altman (12 days 18 hours ago): Robot only runs when you tell it to run a command such as keyPress. If you don’t tell it to run a command, it uses no CPU, so there’s no need to remove the Robot...
Eric (13 days 5 hours ago): Hey @Kevin, can you share your code about create group of figures in the AppContainer? The container of multiples uifigures could be an amazing improvement over AppDesigner and its...
Elsa Smith (13 days 20 hours ago): I recently used java.awt.Robot to perform GUI testing on MATLAB and found it to be an extremely easy and useful way to control mouse movements.
Elsa Smith (13 days 20 hours ago): I’m suspecting that the slow performance of my GUI may be due to the use of java.awt.Robot. Is there a way to cancel/stop/remove the robot after it has been created, or is...
Michelle Kline (14 days 13 hours ago): *edit* tip about fopen(), not about fwrite(). ‘Wb’ vs. ‘wb’
Michelle Kline (14 days 13 hours ago): Thank you, Yair! With this previously-unknown-to-me tip about fwrite() performance, you have saved me literally hours of processing time. Michelle Kline Department of...
Alessandro Beda (27 days 1 hour ago): I found what I think is a bug related to this (tested in R2022 and R2023a). If I add a “ButtonDownFcn” to the plots (see example below), then the modified...
Nicholas (28 days 15 hours ago): Yair, Changing the desktop help options did not solve the issue. Though, it’s unclear how I could change these options in the Runtime, if that’s what you meant? I should...
Yair Altman (32 days 11 hours ago): @Francisco – this is one of those cases where you should ask MathWorks support. After all, you’re trying to use a supported Matlab functionality when you encountered...
Francisco Campos (32 days 22 hours ago): Hello, thanks for all your work that has been immensely useful for those working in the Matlab environment. I have been trying to replace matlabcontrol with the official...
Yair Altman (36 days 23 hours ago): Kei – this is possible, I believe that I saw this ability somewhere, a few years ago. I don’t remember exactly where, it will require a bit of research, but...
Kei (37 days 2 hours ago): Hello Yair Thank you for this great article. I would like to freeze first two columns in uitable. Do you know if such option is available? Since looks like this option is not available...
Andrés Aguilar (40 days 13 hours ago): Hello, has anyone tried to change the language of the DateComboBox? For example English -> French ————&# 8212;—- January -> Janvier April...
Yair Altman (49 days 11 hours ago): I posted my treeTable utility 10 years ago for anyone to use freely, on an as-is basis, without any warranty, updates or support. If you need any customization or assistance...

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