AutoWarnDlg

Self-terminating modal warning dialog with flashing icon

Description

A warning dialog is displayed with a flashing exclamation mark. The dialog is
terminated automatically with the default reply, if the user does not press a
button in a specified period of time.

This can be useful e.g. for functions, which are checked with automated tests, because the dialog does not block the execution completely.

Example:
Show a warning for 15 seconds, choose 'Cancel' if time has passed:
  Opt.Delay = 15;
  Opt.Button = {'Cancel', 'Reject', 'Accept'}; % 1st is default
  Opt.Interpreter = 'tex';
  Opt.Wrap = false;
  [Reply, TimeOut] = AutoWarnDlg({'This is a \bfwarning\rm!', 'Accept, reject or cancel?'}, 'Question', Opt)

Features: Move button focus with the keyboard, copy warning message to the clipboard, flashing icon, text wrapping can be controlled, works even when called from a callback with 'Interruptible' property set to 'off'.

Tested under Matlab 6.5, 7.7, 7.8

• MATLAB release: MATLAB 7.8 (R2009a)
• Other Files: AutoWarnDlg.m, ; license.txt

[Jan Simon]

03-Aug-2009: Fixed bug in help and example: Delay is triggered by field "Delay", not "Sec".

[Matt Fig]

Works well. One thing I would like to see added is an optional second output which stores whether the dialog terminated due to timeout or user acknowledgment. That way if this was called from a code which was running automatically, the user could be notified that a warning was thrown earlier. This could be useful for debugging.

[Jan Simon]

Thanks Matt! 2nd output [TimeOut] is implemented and will be published soon. In addition, more options for the text wrapping are included: none, fixed width in pixels or according to dummy string, auto-wrapping for an approx. 3/2 proportion.

[Aurelien Queffurust]

Works perfectly in the current release R2009b