Is the future matlab GUI: Apps, or figures, or both?

I would like to know what is the mathworks outlook for the future (two years forward, say up to r2019a) regarding those two competing tools.

Does mathworks intend to replace all figure functionality with app? Or is the app supposed to do certain jobs and the figure other ones? Are they going to coexist in the future, or is the app planned to replace the figures?

comment: I edited my post to make the fundamental question clearer, namely I changed "app designer" to "app" and "guide" to "figure", since this is what I am actually asking about.

[itzhak]

Thank you for your views, this was my impression also. They write that apps are the future, but they are not hurrying about it.

We are left with two very different tools, where the decision requires looking at all the supported functions in apps and deciding "I can't do what I want so I will use guide". I am reluctant to start an app, since I am afraid that half-way through I will encounter one of those "can't-do's" and have to start over.

Does anyone have an inside perspective on Mathworks?

[Adam]

App Designer is certainly the future, it just isn't the present unless you are writing very simple Apps and have a lot of patience or adaptability. I have used it for one simple GUI I did, but the editor was awful (e.g. none of the things you just take for granted in the main editor and that are controlled by preferences) and the supported capabilities are still limited at the moment.

As Walter said, there is progress, but it isn't fast so I am leaving App Designer for the foreseeable future because it infuriated me trying to program even a simple GUI with it. GUIDE is not exactly user-friendly in some of its behaviour, but I'm used to it and it works so I mix and match it with programmatic UIs, but these also use old style figures rather than the newer versions.

[Rik]

It is probably a good idea to have a link here to my post about GUI design.

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

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

I would not anticipate that more development would be done on guide other than bug fixes or significant compatibility issues.

On the other hand I would not expect that by the time frame you indicate that all of the functionality of guide will have been implemented. Development does not appear to be all that fast to me— that although there is progress each release there are still major holes that I suspect will not be completely closed by then.

Answer 2

[Image Analyst]

I'm using GUIDE for now, not yet having had a chance/opportunity/need to try out App Designer, and because I have lots of legacy apps. For new apps, I usually take a legacy GUIDE app that I can easily adapt.

However it's my impression that App Designer is the path forward for the Mathworks. If you're just getting started and wanting to know which one to learn, I'd go with App Designer.

Answer 3

[cr]

Its almost 2020 and App designer seems to be lacking many useful features of GUIDE. The latter on the other hand has terrible issues handling large number of components in the editor. But more importantly the apps made by appdesigner seem to be extremely slow for the exact same operations compared to a UI designed in GUIDE.

[Adam]

Yeah, my opinion on App designer really hasn't changed much in the 2½ years since my last comment in this thread. I haven't looked in detail at it in R2019b, but I have opened it and created a very simple UI and it is still slow and still has the same unacceptable editor functionality and lack of), though does at least now support a lot more of the UI/axes interactions that you would expect from GUIDE.

The one app I did create with it takes 2-3 times longer to open than far more detailed ones created in GUIDE, though is on a par with, or faster than programmatric onoes I create using the GUI Layout Toolbox because the layouts there tend to make that very slow to initialise. On the plus side I can do whatever I want with programming that, and in the regular editor and without having chunks of uneditable code forced on me.

[cr]

Do you mean the layout toolbox in the link below?

https://in.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/47982-gui-layout-toolbox

[Adam]

Yes, that's the one I use to build my more complex GUIs.