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Overview
When
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designing
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Positioning
Position settings can be:
- absolute, where set the location of a component with in its parent. This can be useful where you want a component to always appear in the same place, for example a logo. However, it prevents the component from flowing with other things on the screen.
- relative, the component is positioned relative to siblings. This allows items to flow or flex. Use relative positioning if you want your application layout to be responsive to different screen sizes.
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Absolute or Fixed Position
To make a layout component fixed, you can use the options available in the following sections of the layout component properties.
- Position Settings: applies only to this component
- Shared Styles: applies to any component that shares the style
- CSS Properties
For example to fix something to the top left of its parent area, set Top to 0 and Left to 0. Where you have a fixed layout component combined with components that have relative positioning, be aware that:
- the fixed component's size depends on the Position Settings → Width and Height. If no value is set it will have the default minimum size.
- other components will flow over the top of a fixed component. This is because components default to a z-index of 1. z-index controls the in front/behind position.
Bringing a fixed object to the front
If you have a fixed component behind another component, you can move it to be in front using the z-index. By default objects have a z-index of 1. To move something in front, in CSS Properties set:
- CSS Tag:
z-index - Value to be greater than 1.
2 is sufficient to bring a component to the front. However, if you use a larger increment, for example 10, this give you flexibility for adding more layers if they are needed later.
Relative Position
By setting the properties on a parent area, you can determine how the child objects are positioned relative to each other.
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screens we must consider how we want the page content to layout (Size and Position) but also how it should respond to its content and the screen it is being viewed on such as different sized monitors or mobile devices.
This page explains key concepts that you need to understand about how layout components can be positioned, sized and made responsive.
Position
Relative Positioning (Recommended)
Setting the properties on a parent area determines how child objects are positioned. such as in a row or column. The following video describe how to position your items:
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Configuration Options
In the Styles tab for an area we can set the following styles to determine how items held within the area are laid out. PhixFlow uses CSS flexbox to achieve this, for more information on using flexbox visit: a guide to flexbox:
- Direction: the content will be laid out.
- Row puts components next to each other
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- horizontally.
- Column puts components below each other
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- vertically.
- Wrap:
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- allows components to start a new row or column when all space is filled
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- or the screen size changes
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- and components
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- need to flow onto additional rows or columns, rather than disappearing off-screen.
- Justify: determines where content will be placed for example, Flex Start - tells the first component to be in the top left.
- Align: Alignment within the are, for example Stretch - tells each component to stretch to fit the available space. If all components fit on one row, then the components extend to fill the vertical space. If components have to wrap to form a second row, each row will occupy half the vertical space.
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There is a Theme 2 demonstration dashboard that you can use to see how this works. In the repository Packages section navigate to Theme2 - App Builder. Right-click T2 - Example Dashboard. and select Display. When you resize the screen, you can see that the different areas move to remain visible in the smaller window.
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When you change a layout component from flowing within its parent to having a fixed position, depending on other settings:
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Position Settings (Object Level)
o Value entered directly into the fields in PhixFlow and get applied to the selected object.
The CSS is constructed using all of these elements each adding and overriding to the elements before it.
Positioning (Video: Positioning)
• Absolute
o the element is positioned absolutely to its parent. This can be thought of as a fixed position as the element will be taken out of the flow.
Example use: positioning a logo.
• Relative
o The element is positioned relative to its normal position and siblings. The design can be thought of as flowing (or flexing).
Example use: applied to elements such as fields that will be used to create a responsive application.
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Position can also be set in a shared style which allows you to combine positioning with conditional formatting rules. For example,
- show or hide an area base on an on/off toggle.
- Use the Internal Variable _client.mobile which returns true if the page is being viewed on a mobile device to amend how the screen looks.
Absolute or Fixed Position
Absolute positioning stipulates the a fixed position for an item. For example, to specify a component is always positioned in the top left corner of its parent area, set Position Settings → Top: 0 and Left: 0.
If you have a fixed layout component combined with components that have relative positioning, be aware that:
- the fixed component's size depends on its Position Settings → Width and Height. If no value is set it will have the default minimum size.
In Front or Behind Another Component
To change which component is in front/behind:
- add a CSS Properties and set:
- CSS Tag:
z-index - Value: this is a whole number that determines how afar in front or behind an item will appear. For example items with a z-index of 20 will appear in fron f items with a value of 10. Consider using a larger increment, for example 10, as this provides the flexibility of adding more layers if they are needed.
Size
To control the size of layout components on a screen, again we can use Relative and Absolute sizing. THe following video helps illustrate how this works:
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Relative Sizing
- Specify a size that varies as the screen resizes and always occupies the same proportion of space.
Set a percentage in Position Settings → Width and Height withvalue% e.g. 75%.. - Allow the layout component to automatically expand to fit the visible space on screen.
Set Style Settings → Auto Size ticked.- If the layout component has siblings (components at the same level) they share the space in the flow direction equally.
(To specify the flow direction, in the parent component set Style Settings → Direction.) - Child components may need more space than is available. For example, they may contain more fields than will fit on a screen. In this case the fields will extend outside the boundaries of the parent area.
- If the layout component has siblings (components at the same level) they share the space in the flow direction equally.
- Control how much a layout component will expand compared to its siblings using a ratio.
Set a Style Settings → Grow Factor. For example, enter 2 to allow a component to take up twice the space as its siblings. - Allow layout components to expand to the space they need, pushing the parent container to expand beyond the screen.
Set Style Settings → Auto Size unticked.
Remember to enable scroll bars on the parent container using Style Settings → Show Horizontal Scrollbar and Show Vertical Scrollbar. - Allow a layout component to change it's size within a minimum and/or maximum range.
In CSS Properties set CSS Tag:min-heightormax-heightand Value:valuepx e.g. 45px.
Absolute
- Specify a fixed size in pixels.
Set Position Settings → Width and Height withvaluepx.
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Remember that with auto size set: A single, empty area component on a screen will automatically expand to fill all the available screen space, even though if it is empty. It does not expand to accommodate all its content. If there are more fields than can be displayed in a component you can:
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Responsive Applications
Use Positions and Sizes to make your application respond to its content and /or the screen size it is being viewed on. When you combine Auto Size with Style Settings, you can achieve a responsive "flexbox" design very easily.
This is shown in this video:
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When you set Auto Size and a Direction, PhixFlow provides additional Style Settings for Wrap, Justify and Align. The Align: Stretch option is useful to expand components into the available space perpendicular to the flow direction. For example, in a row, components stretch to fill the vertical space. In a column, they stretch to fill the horizontal space.