PhixFlow Help

Using Palettes

This page is for application designers who want to use or create palettes.

Overview

A palette provides quick access to set of configured layout templates, which you can drag onto a dashboard canvas to design a screen.

PhixFlow comes with two default palettes:

  • Basic Components: contains all basic components, such as String Field and CheckBox without any additional labels and styling.
  • Labeled Fields: contains a set of predefined form fields that have configurable labels. This is the palette to use when designing application forms. 


You can also install additional Theme palettes. These are designed to have everything you need to create GUI screens by simply dragging the tiles from the palette into a screen.

You can configure PhixFlow to use automatically your preferred palette; see application properties → Basic Settings → Default Component Palette.

The Default Palette

The palette tab lists the palettes that are available in your PhixFlow instance. You can create a palette specifically for your application. However, palettes are designed to be used across multiple applications.

Your application is created with a default palette. When you create data components, such as fields, grids and charts, PhixFlow uses designs from the default palette to format the component. If you use a layout or component from a palette from a different application, PhixFlow may use the default palette for that application.

  • If the application that contains the lis running, PhixFlow uses the default palette set for the application.
  • If the container application is not running, PhixFlow uses the default palette set for the area.
  • If the container application is not running, but you are dragging attributes into a component/layout for a different (destination) application that is running, then PhixFlow uses the default palette for the destination application.

In all cases, if no palette has been set for the application or area, PhixFlow falls back to using the system default palette; see System Configuration.

Making Your Own Palette

You can make changes to palette components and layouts to adjust them to suit your own design requirements or you can create your own. This means you can easily reuse layouts to quickly create dashboards with a consistent look and feel.

Step 1  Create layouts

  1. On a dashboard:
    • either add an existing layout from the palette, then make changes to its design
    • or design your own layouts.
  2. Convert a saved layout to a layout template. In the repository, right-click and select Copy as a Template; see Making Template Components.

Step 2  Create a palette and add layouts

  1. Right-click the repository branch → Application → Palette and select  Create New.
  2. PhixFlow opens a properties tab for the palette. Name the palette and save it.
  3. In the Screens section, click the  List Layers button to see all the layout templates in the repository.
  4. Drag all the layout templates that you want in your palette into the Component property.

Step 3  Optionally organise your palette

In the palette properties:

  1. Optionally set up Default Components.
    PhixFlow has a Base Component palette. From the components you have added, select any that you want to appear on this palette. Base components are usually components or simple layouts that are commonly used, such as form fields.

  2. Optionally define Palette Groups.
    This allows you to group layouts into logical sets, such as containers, buttons, form; see Palette Groups, below.

Step 4  Save your palette.

Adding Layouts to an Existing Palette

If you have a layout that you want to add to a palette, you must first copy it as a layout template; see Making Template Components.

To add a layout template to a palette:

  1. Open and pin the repository tab and the palette tab.
  2. Drag one of the tabs into the workspace to show the tabs side-by-side.
  3. From the repository branch → Layout Template, drag a template from the repository into a palette.

Removing Layouts from a Palette

To remove items from a palette, right-click on the item in the palette and click  Delete. This removes the component from the palette, but does not remove it from the repository.


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