This page is for application designers. It explains the basic principles for how to add components from the palette as well as features to help you.

Overview

If you are new to PhixFlow and designing screens for an application, start with the Building Applications training course.

This page is a reminder of the drag-and-drop principles that you use when designing screens.

• Dragging components
  • Drag -sibling
  • Shift Drag child inside
  • Preferred parent link → Drag puts it directly inside PP (child) AND  as a sibling of any other content. eg. Tile container has many tiles.
• Parent child and preferred parent - link out
• Reordering on screen and in repository 

Dragging into a Screen

To add a component to a screen, you can drag in:

• components or layouts from
  • the palette
  • the repository → Templates (anywhere else.
• streams (tables) or their attributes, to add data-bound components such as grids, charts or form-fields.

todo - Attempting to drag a pinned component: at the moment this is copying BUT I cannot seem to unpin.

When you drag an unpinned component to a different place on the screen, it will be automatically assigned to the parent you drop it into (for example, an area), and it will be dropped in the position that you drop it. So if you drop it in the middle of a set of fields inside an area, the fields underneath will be shuffled down to make space for it.

To drop an item onto a form that would normally be created unpinned (see table above) as pinned - hold the Ctrl key down while dragging.

Pinning and Unpinning

You can fix the position of a component on an area by pinning it. When you drag a component or layout in from the palette it is automatically pinned. (See the table above for all pinned/unpinned) todo.

Unpinned

When you drag in an unpinned component, PhixFlow automatically puts it in in the next space available. By default, this is underneath the previous component. However, you can control the flow using CSS properties. Components in forms are represented as DIV objects. 

You can drag unpinned components around in their parent component, and PhixFlow puts them wherever you drop them.

You can also manually control the order of unpinned components by editing the Order field in the details of the component. This is found in the Positional Settings section of the details. The video above gives an example of using both of these methods - dragging, and manual update.

Pinned

Pinned components can be placed anywhere on an area and you can drag pinned components to any position on a screen.

You can pin the edges of the component to its parent component using the Positional Settings in the component's details. To do this, set the offsets between the top, right, bottom and left edges of the component to those of the parent. The offsets are in number of pixels between the edge of the component and the edge of the parent. 

Switching Between Unpinned and Pinned

Pinned components can be dragged over unpinned components, so be careful when mixing pinned and unpinned components on a form. Think of these as being laid out in two separate, overlapping layers on the screen.

To change an unpinned component to pinned, press Ctrl and drag it.

To unpin a pinned component, right-click on it and select Unpin Selected Objects. You can select several components at once, and unpin them all using this option. The components will move into the next available space in their respective parent components.

Preventing Accidental Dragging

Pinning relates to a components parent-child relationship. It does not 

Fix a component in position on the screen.
To Fix a component, use the position properties. Avoid if you want responsive design

To prevent accidental dragging.

To prevent accidental dragging of components and layouts on the screen, go to the components properties → Positional Settings section, and tick Prevent Dragging.

Finding a Component's Container

To find the container of a component in a screen, you can:

• right-click on the component and select Find in Explorer .
  PhixFlow opens the Layouts with the component selected. You can then see how the selected component fits into the parent-child hierarchy.
• click on the space next to the component to open its properties.
  This option is less reliable as a screen becomes more complex.

Moving Components and Layouts

You can move components and layouts around on the screen, but we recommend you use the repository Layouts list as it is easier to drag layouts and be clear about the parent and sibling relationships you want.

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

To confirm that the component has moved to the new parent, remember the techniques to find the parent of a component: Find a component's parent

Auto Sizing

When you are designing a screen, you can use the Layout area → Style Settings→ Auto-size property to make components adjust automatically when the application's window is resized by the user. 

You can use the context menu option  Turn Auto Size Off/On to toggle the Auto Size property as you work. 

Build Up a basic form

Note that there are no fancy flow stuff for this.

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 the Basic 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

Dividing screens

There are 2 ways to divide a screen.

Use Context Menu Options

1. Right-click a screen
2. Use one of the Add Area... options to add a new part for the screen, separated with a dividing line.
   PhixFlow creates a new dashboard element for this part of the screen.
3. Add a suitable container, such as an area, form or card container.

Use a Palette Layout

Some palettes have layouts that have 2 areas contained by a split-view area. For example:

• Basic Components → Split View 
• Theme 2 - App Builder Base Components → Area Split  

1. In the screen canvas toolbar, click  Palette.
2. Expand a palette to find a layout that has 2 areas.
3. Drag the layout from the palette onto an existing area.
4. PhixFlow creates a layout with the following structure:

Area

Split View (special type of area)

Area 1

Area 2

Connecting Layouts to Data

To connect a form area to data in a stream (table) 

From the repository, drag the stream name onto an area or layout

From the stream (table) properties, drag the icon at the top of the properties onto an area or layout.

Todo - check and link

PhixFlow will prompt you to select the type of stream or card view that you want to create; see Stream Views Pop-Up Menu.