This page is for application designers who are editing or creating palettes with custom components. It explains how to use layout categories on template components to set preferred parent highlighting.
Overview
The PhixFlow palette contains sets of template layouts and components. It is easy to drag a layout or component from a palette onto a screen.
If a component or layout on the palette has a preferred parent configured, PhixFlow will highlight the appropriate areas onto which you can drop it. This can be useful where you have a screen with different areas designed to display different things, such as:
- a header for static and dynamic text
- a form-area for data fields and text labels
- a card-area for cards
- a button bar for buttons
- a tile container for tiles.
Some palettes include layouts called tile containers and tiles. These layouts are configured to with styles and properties that ensure a screen is responsive to changes in screen size or form-factor.
Configure a preferred parent for a layout or component that is either already on the palette, or that you intend to add to the palette. The nature and naming of parent types is up to you.
The following palettes predate version 9.0.0 and the template components are not configured with preferred parents.
- Pre-installed palettes
- Basic Components
- Labelled Fields
- Packaged palette
- Theme 1 - App Builder Base Components
- Theme 1 - App Builder Prebuilt Components
- Packaged palette installed in version 8.3 or earlier
- Theme 2 - App Builder
- Theme 2 - App Builder Base Components
- Theme 2 - Buttons
This means when you drag components from them, PhixFlow is unable to highlight potential parent areas.
To install the latest version of Theme 2, which has been updated to add preferred parents, see Installing Template Packages.
See also
How to Configure Preferred Parents
- Create layout categories; see Layout Categories properties.
- Either in the repository, expand the Layout Categories section and click
Add New. - Or in an area component properties, in Basic Settings → Layout Categories, click Add New.
- Either in the repository, expand the Layout Categories section and click
- Edit an area component. In Basic Settings → Layout Category, select a layout category.
- Open the repository and expand Layout Categories.
- Drag the repository tab to the left to display it next to the other tabs.
- Open a component's properties.
For example, in the palette, right-click on a component and select Edit. - From the repository, drag a layout category onto the Preferred Parent Categories list.
The following table shows some examples of the layout categories you could create, and the components that would be appropriate for them.
| Template component | Layout category/preferred parent |
|---|---|
| static and dynamic text fields | header-area, form-area |
| data fields | form-area |
| buttons | button bar |
Step 4 illustrated:
When you are dragging a component from the palette, you can drop it onto any suitable container - it does not have to be a preferred parent. However, if you drop a component onto a container that is not a preferred parent, PhixFlow will look at any other containers in order to put it in there.