This page is for application designers. It explains how the structure of a screen is made up of layouts and components.

Overview

A screen is made up of components (the smallest building block) and layouts (set of preconfigured components) arranged into layers. Components are items such as areas, static text labels and form fields which display data from a table.

Screen Layers

A typical screen has a layered structure, in which the main areas are the parents for other components. This structure, combined with appropriate styling, creates a responsive design that will adapt to both desktop and mobile devices. The nested structure for screens is illustrated below:

Image Modified

Components

These are the most basic building blocks that are combined to design a screen.

Components are available from any palette, for example theme 2.1 they can be found under Basic Layouts. For every component you add, you need to give it a name and specify the formatting using the  Component properties. It's a good idea to include a meaningful description too.

The basic components are:

Layouts

Layouts are a set of combined components. You can create these yourself by combining and styling components or you can use the pre-built layouts from a palette (recommended). For example, a simple layout is a tile, this is illustrated below:

• Tile contains the styles which make the area look lie a tile and controls the layout of its child objects.
• Header, an area which contains an icon and a static text.
• Body, a simple area that controls the layout of items places inside it, including the addition of spacing around its edge.
• Footer, area which houses a set of buttons used for updating content associated to the tile.

Finding Layouts and

Components

Anchor
formBuildingFindComponentParent formBuildingFindComponentParent

It can be very useful to find a layout, component or the items which contains them. There are two ways to locate the object you are looking forachieve this:

Using the Layers

Using find in Repository

In the repository, you can see the different elements listed under the dahboard.

The Layouts navigator is expandable from the left hand side. Selecting an item from the canvas will highlight it in the layouts, and selecting an item in the Layouts with highlight it on the canvas.

If the layer section is not visible click 

Using find in Repository

The repository can be manually searched, simply expand the Components branch (

screen is reflected in their order and nesting in the repository list of layouts. To rearrange layouts on a screen, you can drag component to a different position in the

Components branch of the repository.

• Your screens are in Dashboards
• Elements are in Dashboards > Elements
• For anything else on a screen, it is listed under Layouts
• The nested structure of layouts (container/children) is reflected in the repository Layouts
• To find where a component is in the repository, right-click it and select Find

Image RemovedImage Added

The repository shows the hierarchical structure of components. With containers and their children and siblings.

Using Properties

Right-click and select 

Moving Layouts

Affected by

• pinned/unpinned - unpin a pinned item
• don't drag - untick dont drag
• field container/composite - moves items as grouped
• preferred parent - affects the drop. Assumes you want to put the dropped component/layout into the preferred parent container.

Can be done in the repository Layouts (recommended) or in the screen.

PhixFlow needs to know when you drag something whether or not you want to create a sibling relationship or parent child relationship. Dragging on screen this can be ambiguous.

To make sure you are moving a whole parent/child set of things and moving them within an area it is easiest to move things in the Layouts list in the repository

Animation of dragging in the 

On Screen

Assuming its free to move,

Drag creates a sibling relationship. So if you drop it on a field, it goes next to the field. If you drop it on a container, it goes next to the container.

Shift-drag creates a parent child relationship, where you can only drop onto an appropriate container.

In the repository

To move a component to a new container, press Shift and drag it to the new container. Commonly this is used to move components inside an area to a new area.

To confirm that the component has moved to the new container, remember the techniques to find the container of a component, above.

You cannot add to an area or form that is set as Advanced → View Type → field container. You need to unset this option, add the additional components, then reset the option; see Adding Text and Labels.

Preventing Accidental Dragging

todo - check if this is only related to accidental dragging in design mode - no effect on movement due to responsive design?

Sometimes, when laying out a form, you may find it interesting to "lock" a component in place, to stop yourself dragging it to a new position by accident. To do this, in the component properties → Positional Settings section, tick Prevent Dragging.

todo - What is the role of pin/unpin compared to this

Take into account fixed components and layouts prevent responsive changes to the screen layout, for example if a user changes the screen size of your application on a desktop window, or if it is being displayed on a mobile device.

Themes have been designed to be responsive 

Grouping Components

You can group to components together so that PhixFlow treats them as a single item when you drag. This is useful where you have a data field and static text label that you want to keep together. The palette includes prebuilt labelled fields that you can drag in that are already grouped. This type of layout is made up of at least 3 components: 

• a form component, with the settings:
• Basic Settings → Composite ticked
• Advanced → View Type → field container
• the child components
• a static or dynamic text field
• a data field, such as string, number or date.

How to Group Components

To make your own grouped components: 

1. In the dashboard, add a form component.
2. In a basic components palette, such as Basic Components, drag onto a form container:
   • an area to be a container
   • the components you want to treat as a single layout 

3. PhixFlow adds these all as siblings.

4. Right-click one of the new fields and select 

   Insert excerpt
   _repository_find _repository_find nopanel true

   . PhixFlow displays the component in the repository layouts list.

5. Within the repository list, shift-drag to move the components into the container you created.

6. Open the properties for the container. In Basic Settings, tick Composite.

Field Containers

PhixFlow has another property that you can use on its own or within a composite component. The option is Advanced → View Type → field container. When this is selected, PhixFlow uses the name of a container as the label on a field. todo-Fiona check

Adding Text and Labels.

Creating Responsive layouts

Some palettes (e.g. those for Theme 2) have been designed so that layouts and components arrange themselves as you add them. These are called Tiles in the Theme 2 palette. If you use palettes not in Theme 2, you will have to set options to ensure components are arranged correctly (see style pages).

Lay things out using horizontal or vertical flow, with layouts allowed to flow relative to each other - avoid static styles

Most components or layouts dragged from the palette must be dragged onto an appropriate container (Area, form, card container)

You can drag data or data components directly onto an element

See also

• /wiki/spaces/HELP90/pages/2076246053
• Position, Size and Flow of Layout Components.

Styles

1. Use the styles set in the theme
2. Adapt the theme by editing the styles of components or shared styles
3. Create your own components and set the styles.

For an individual component, whether you create it yourself or drag it from the palette, any styles set in its properties are its own. 

You may want your components to reflect a change you make in one place. To do this, use a shared style on all your components. For example you could set the colour of all buttons using a shared style. If you decide to use a different button colour, you can change it once in the shared style and all the buttons in your application will change colour.

• Shared Styles and Style Order
• Style

Binding to Data

You can add data components to a dashboard without using the palette, by simply dragging a stream onto a dashboard, dashboard element or area.  PhixFlow prompts you to select the type of data component. Optionally, you can create a data view, by add related attributes, sorting and filtering; see Showing Data on a Screen.

Alternatively, you can bind data to a form or card container by dragging a stream or stream view onto Basic Settings → Stream, or Stream View Name properties.

How tos

todo - move this to it's own page.

Reminder of the training, specific techniques.

Build Up a basic form

Note that there are no fancy flow stuff for this. Ask Sarah or Anthony? Classic for videos

What data do you need to show - 

1. Create screen 
2. Open palette
3. Add Basic Components > Form, and name
4. Click on the screen to open the properties for your area. In shared styles you will see that this has some default shared styles applied.
5. Palette Labelled fields > Add labelled fields you need. Click to see properties
   • The Labelled fields palette has composite items - see theBasic Settings checkbox.
   • there are two parts, a static text label and the data field. Making them composite means
   • They move as if they are one thing
   • The name you give to the items is used as the text for the label.
6. Attributes list - open stream > attributes section or expand for list in repository
7. Drag from attribute onto form

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCeiTdv0ty4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXt89u6QGXE