Can two panels share a uicontrol in a MATLAB GUI?

Question

I've got a MATLAB GUI that has different aspects of functionality, each with their own panel of uicontrols. When one panel is selected, the other one is set to invisible, and vice-versa. However, they share some of the same inputs in the form of a popup menu. Can I include a 'clone' instance of the menu on the second panel somehow? I'd like to avoid as many redundant callbacks and uicontrols as possible.

Answer 1

I guess if the uicontrol was a direct child of the figure, you may be able to put it in front of everything.

A much simpler solution is to use the same callback for multiple uicontrols. In the property editor, you can modify the callback name and set it to a common callback function. Additionally, you can create a field (e.g. myPopupH) in the OpeningFcn of the GUI, in which you store the handles of the popups that should behave the same way. Then, in the callback, you'd use hObject, i.e. the first input argument, for all the get calls (to access the modified state of the popup-menu), but you'd use handles.myPopupH in all the set calls, so that you can ensure that both popups always have the same state. Thus, the ui-object may be redundant, but all the code (which is much more critical) only exists in a single copy.

One place where I routinely use a single callback for multiple ui elements is the close request function which is accessed from the "Cancel"-button as well as from the "X" that closes the figure, and possibly from one of the "File"-menu items.