This page explains how to open a screen or create a new one.

Select an Existing Screen

From the application Home window, select Design Screens.
Select one of the listed screens.

PhixFlow opens the screen canvas on the left and the palette on the right.

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Sections on this page

Create a New Screen

If you have defined your data in an ERD, you can screen and its components based on data; see Create a Screen From ERD Data. To create the screen first:

Click Add New Create New to create a new screen.
Select a screen template. This will give you pre-set layouts such as:
- desktop or mobile dimensions
- full screen or pop-up
- a data grid or form.
PhixFlow prompts you to:
- Enter the name and description for the screen.
- Select whether or not the screen will Open Maximised.
  When you select this option, the screen will open "full screen" for the application user.
  Otherwise, PhixFlow assumes the screen will be a pop-up window. It automatically selects the following options:
  - Always on top
  - Allow user to resize
Click Confirm.
PhixFlow opens a new screen canvas on the left and the palette on the right.

To add components to the screen, drag them into the canvas from the palette.

The Screen Canvas and Options

PhixFlow has several areas of the screen with features to help you when designing a screen.

The central area is the canvas where you design your screen.
Along the top of the canvas is the toolbar
On the left is the layers panel, which shows how the components are nested. Click Show/Hide Layer Panel to hide the layers panel.
On the right is the palette. Drag components from the palette onto the canvas.
Above the toolbar, are tabs?? where you can find things that you might want to use:
- other palettes
- component categories
- templates: components that can be added to a palette
- styles
- menus
- images.

Unlock a Screen Canvas

To prevent accidental editing of a screen, PhixFlow opens an existing screen with the canvas locked:

when you first open an existing screen in Design Mode
when you switch between Design Mode and Application Mode.

To unlock the canvas, right-click on the canvas and select

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.

Adding Components to a Screen

For your selected template, PhixFlow displays a palette. This has all the "bits" or components you need to build a screen. A typical screen has a nested structure, as shown in the following picture.

As you add components into a parent, use the

Layers panel to see the relationship between them.

The easiest way to move components around is in the layers panel, rather than in the screen itself. When you are dragging things around in the screen, PhixFlow may not know if you want to drop a component:

into another component, creating a parent-child relationship
next to another component, creating a sibling relationship.

If instead you drag acomponent in the list of layers, you can be specific about how the component relates to other components on the screen.

If you are using PhixFlow's palette, most components will flow into the space that is available to them. see Using Size and Position for Responsive Design.

The way a GUI screen is made up of levels of content is reflected in the way components are constructed and grouped in the palette. At the top level are the most pre-built items

Complete Forms - a full screen layout
Form Elements - sets fo components prebuilt to make it easy to create a customised screen

If you do not want to use these, you can design your own screen. Some components are designed to be containers. These will give you distinct areas on the screen, with padding and margins so that child items look sensible.

Tile containers - create the areas on your screen design
You can then drag in Tiles or tile elements. These are still composites of several components.

If you want to go right back to the basic screen components and fields, use the last 2 palettes.

You do not need to add lots of individual form fields to your screen. Instead you can:

select the attributes you want to apper in a form
drag the attributes onto the parent container for the form
let PhixFlow create default form fields in which to display data records.

For how to do this, see Showing Data on a Component.

Alternatively, you can add components, such as fields, and bind them to data later.

Fields that do not know what data to show are displayed with a broken link icon??, and those that have a data binding show the link icon??

Where Can I Drop This?

Whenever you start to drag a component from the palette, or an attribute, PhixFlow highlights the area onto which you can drop something using light blue, as shown below.

Using Layers

As you add components to the screen, they are nested so that there is an outer container (parent) with components inside (children). You can see the parent/child hierarchy in the Layers List. Click the layers tab on the left to show the layers list. There is an example on the right.

You can

Select something on your screen to see it/them highlighted in the layers list.
- Selected items outlined in blue
- Parent item outlined in orange.
in the layers list, drag components around to move them on the screen.

Testing Screens

PhixFlow aims to show you how the screen will appear to users. However, when you are working in Design Modethere are visible elements to help you with the process of screen design. For example, the top of the canvas shows the screen toolbar, and components that are connected to data are marked with glyps. To see how a screen will appear to a user and to test how it is working, switch to Application Mode. You can now interact with the screen as if you are an application user.

Creating or Opening a Screen