Overview

When designing 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:

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: 

1. Direction: the content will be laid out.
   1. Row puts components next to each other horizontally.
   2. Column puts components below each other vertically.
2. Wrap: allows components to start a new row or column when all space is filled or the screen size changes and components need to flow onto additional rows or columns, rather than disappearing off-screen.
3. Justify: determines where content will be placed for example, Flex Start - tells the first component to be in the top left.
4. 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.

Position can also be set in a shared style which allows you to combine positioning with conditional formatting rules. For example,

1. show or hide an area base on an on/off toggle.
2. 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:

1. add a CSS Properties and set:
2. CSS Tag: z-index
3. 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:

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 with value% 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.
• 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-height or max-height and Value: valuepx e.g. 45px.

Absolute

• Specify a fixed size in pixels.
  Set Position Settings → Width and Height with valuepx.

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:

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.

More Information

• Screen Styling
• Formatting Rule