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Hyperlink text labels

October 21, 2015 5 Comments

It is often useful to include hyperlinked text labels in GUIs. Such labels provide single-click access to important functionality, improve branding, and are non-intrusive action controls having a lower visual impact than a full-blown button. There are several ways that we can display such hyperlinks in Matlab GUIs, and today I will show one of my favorites.
The basic idea is to create a Java text label control whose label displays an HTML link. The control is modified to change the mouse cursor when it hovers over the hyperlink, and a mouse-click callback is set to open the hyperlink target in the system browser:

hyperlink text label
hyperlink text label

% Create and display the text label
url = 'UndocumentedMatlab.com';
labelStr = ['<html>More info: <a href="">' url '</a></html>'];
jLabel = javaObjectEDT('javax.swing.JLabel', labelStr);
[hjLabel,hContainer] = javacomponent(jLabel, [10,10,250,20], gcf);
% Modify the mouse cursor when hovering on the label
hjLabel.setCursor(java.awt.Cursor.getPredefinedCursor(java.awt.Cursor.HAND_CURSOR));
% Set the label's tooltip
hjLabel.setToolTipText(['Visit the ' url ' website']);
% Set the mouse-click callback
set(hjLabel, 'MouseClickedCallback', @(h,e)web(['http://' url], '-browser'))

% Create and display the text label url = 'UndocumentedMatlab.com'; labelStr = ['<html>More info: <a href="">' url '</a></html>']; jLabel = javaObjectEDT('javax.swing.JLabel', labelStr); [hjLabel,hContainer] = javacomponent(jLabel, [10,10,250,20], gcf); % Modify the mouse cursor when hovering on the label hjLabel.setCursor(java.awt.Cursor.getPredefinedCursor(java.awt.Cursor.HAND_CURSOR)); % Set the label's tooltip hjLabel.setToolTipText(['Visit the ' url ' website']); % Set the mouse-click callback set(hjLabel, 'MouseClickedCallback', @(h,e)web(['http://' url], '-browser'))


Note the visual illusion here: we do not directly click the hyperlink (note that its href is empty), but rather the label control. The end-result is the same.
Also note that this technique could be used to easily display clickable icons/images, including animated and transparent GIFs, by simply setting the label’s HTML string to display the relevant image. I have already shown how to do this in another post. Uses could range from clickable logo images to clickable help icons.
We could also use a flat (borderless) button. I have already posted related articles about button customizations in Matlab GUIs (here, here and here). In fact, I have already shown how we can use borderless buttons in Matlab axes to display a non-obtrusive control for controlling plot properties. The code would be very similar to the above, except that we would use a JButton rather than a JLabel, and also need to setBorder([]) and similar button-specific modifications. Buttons have a bit more functionality and customizability than simple text labels; the appearance would be the same, but the extra customizability may be handy in very special cases, although not for most use-cases.
One of the benefits of using either JLabels or JButtons is that they enable multiple callbacks (e.g., FocusGained,FocusLost) and properties (e.g., VerticalAlignment,ToolTipText) that the standard Matlab text uicontrol does not provide (not to mention their builtin ability to display HTML, which Matlab’s uicontrol text labels do not posses).

Related posts:

  1. Transparent labels – Matlab labels can be set to a transparent background as well as padding. ...
  2. Customizing Matlab labels – Matlab's text uicontrol is not very customizable, and does not support HTML or Tex formatting. This article shows how to display HTML labels in Matlab and some undocumented customizations...
  3. Customizing axes tick labels – Multiple customizations can be applied to tick labels. ...
  4. Toolbar button labels – GUI toolbar button labels can easily be set and customized using underlying Java components. ...
  5. Syntax highlighted labels & panels – Syntax-highlighted labels and edit-boxes can easily be displayed in Matlab GUI - this article explains how. ...
  6. Images in Matlab uicontrols & labels – Images can be added to Matlab controls and labels in a variety of manners, documented and undocumented. ...
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5 Responses
  1. Yaroslav October 21, 2015 at 09:03 Reply

    Hi,
    Apparently, there is a typo in the 3rd line of the code; it should read:

    ...
    jLabel = javaObjectEDT('javax.swing.JLabel', labelStr);
    ...

    ... jLabel = javaObjectEDT('javax.swing.JLabel', labelStr); ...

    • Yair Altman October 21, 2015 at 09:16 Reply

      Thanks Don, corrected

  2. oussama August 27, 2016 at 01:43 Reply

    hi, but how to connect the code with the label ??

    • Yair Altman August 27, 2016 at 22:51 Reply

      @oussama – read the post carefully. I showed how you can attach Matlab code to the label’s MouseClickedCallback property. You can attach any Matlab callback function that accepts 2 input args (the label object handle and the eventData object).

  3. پروژه متلب November 13, 2016 at 00:08 Reply

    Thanks for kind useful information.

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