This page is for application designers who want to design re-usable layout components and add them to palettes.
Overview
The easiest way to design a screen for an application is to:
- create a dashboardscreen; see Screen
- drag in pre-designed layout components from the palette. For information about the palettes that can be installed with PhixFlow, see pages in the Using Palettes and Themes topic.
Layout components Components in a palette have been designed to have consistent formats; see pages in the Styles and Formats topic.
If you have a specific layout component that you want to reuse on multiple screens, you can make a template of the component, then add it to a new or existing palette.
For Layouts Components and Layout Templates the repository does not have a context menu option to add a new one.
Making a
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Template
- Design your layout component and set all the style options you require.
- In the dashboard, right-click the layout component and select
.Insert excerpt _repository_find _repository_find nopanel true - In the repository, right-click the layout component name.
- From the context menu, select Copy as a Template.
- PhixFlow opens a new property tab. This is a copy of the original component, with the Advanced → Template property ticked. It is saved in the Layout Template section of the repository.
- Edit the name to reflect that this component is now a template.
We recommend that you add a layout template to a Palette:
- Open the repository and palette. Drag one of the tabs into the workspace to show the tabs side-by-side.
- Drag the layout template from the repository into the palette.
Reusing Components in Dashboards
To use a layout template, simply drag it into the dashboard:
- either from the repository Layout Template Template
- or from the palette.
When you drag in the componenttemplate, PhixFlow prompts you to add a name. PhixFlow saves the copy in your application as a layout component on the screen, using the new name. This means that changing a template
- does not change the components that have already been copied from it.
- new copies will have the change.
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To be able to change the appearance of existing copies of a layout template: configure When you set up a template, you might want the option of changing the appearance of components that have been copied from a template. To do this, set up a shared style.
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Managing
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Templates
When you use a style or layout template in your dashboards, they become part of your application. To successfully move an application to a different PhixFlow instance, you must include the layout template template and styles in the export. Consider adding your application, and any items it uses, such as templates and styles, to a package, to ensure they are all included in an export; see Package.
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