Controlling the tab order of UI components

I'm building UI with GUIDE that provides users with multiple (~50) options for accessing, processing, and plotting geophysical data from multiple sources and formats (satellites, re-analysis, model output). First pass data entry can be time consuming when many options need to be changed.

One UI attribute that speeds up that process is when pressing the Tab button advances focus to the next logical UI control element (e.g. from startDay edit text box to endDay edit text box). When that's done properly it's easy for the user to rapidly enter lots of control information such as startYear, endYear, startMonth, endMonth, startDay, endDay, etc... Just enter a number and Tab advance to the next edit text box where focus is already set. Type in new number, and Tab to next. Repeat...

If it's not done properly, the process is much more laborious. Tab advance jumps focus all over the UI to unrelated input boxs, radio buttons, etc. User has to mouse click to the desired text box before doing data entry.

QUESTION: Where is the order in which that (Tab initiated) advance from one UI element to the next controlled and how can it be modified? It seems to stem from the order the element was originally created in GUIDE, but once that's done, I'm unable to change the behavior of Tab advance in the resulting UI. Modifying where each element's create and callback functions appear in .m code does not change this Tab advance order.

If providing a code snippet would help, glad to do that.

Thanks!

Mike

Answer 1

[Steven Lord]

Use the Tab Order Editor.

[Adam]

Unfortunately though if you have UI components grouped in panels there is no option (at least not that I have ever found) to determine what order the panels are visited during tabbing, as the tab order editor only defines the order within a given parent.

[Mike Wilson]

Awesome! You guys are really great with quick answers to dumb questions. So often it's just a matter of where to look. Thanks!