Appboard/old/layouts 2.3

This page provides information on deprecated features in an older version of AppBoard. For current information on Layouts, see Layouts.

AppBoard versions 2.3 and lower provide two layout options for the system designer.

The Basic Layout snaps Widgets into a grid on the Board in an intuitive manner as you create them. The Layout Manager automatically uses all of the available space on the screen. The AppBoard administrator can also drag the Widgets around the screen to customize the presentation. This option provides for less flexibility, but is easier to configure.

The Free Flow Layout gives the designer complete freedom to move and re-size Widgets anywhere in the Board. This option provides more flexibility, but will typically take more effort to configure. Widgets that display outside of the viewing area in the Free Flow Layout may require that the User perform a scroll bar navigation to view these Widgets.

Basic Flow Layout automatically scales Widgets to ensure that content fills all available real estate on a Board. Basic Flow Layout allows you to re-position Widgets on a Board, but you can not re-size individual Widgets.

Selecting Basic Flow Layout

Perform the following steps to select Basic Flow Layout for an AppBoard Stack:

1. Log in to AppBoard as an administrator
2. Click the "Builder" icon in the left panel to enter the default Builder mode
3. Select the Stack for which you want to set the layout to "Basic Flow Layout"
4. Under "Board Options" in the left panel, select "BasicFlowLayout" from the drop-down selector.

Dragging Widgets in Basic Flow Layout Mode

You can rearrange Widgets in Basic Flow Layout by simply dragging them to a new location. To do this, you left-click and drag the title of the Widget, then drop the Widget in a new location. There are three drop targets available:

1. Insert Target

   • This Target appears on the outside of Widgets, or in the gap between Widgets. Dropping a Widget in this area will insert the new Widget at that location and uniformly re-size the other Widgets in that row or column to make room for itself.

2. Split Target

   • This target appears inside of a Widget, but only close to one of the edges. A "split" is similar to an insert, except that it only affects the target Widget rather then the entire row or column.

3. Swap Target

   • This target appears over a title bar. A "swap" will change the positions of two Widgets on the screen, without re-sizing any of the other content.

Selecting Free Flow Layout

Free Flow Layout gives you the ability to manually re-size individual Widgets, as well as drag them to new locations. Free Flow Layout is extremely flexible and allows you to create any layout that you want. The only draw back to this mode is that alignment is also a manual operation.

Perform the following steps to select Free Flow Layout for an AppBoard Stack:

1. Log in to AppBoard as an administrator
2. Click the "Builder" icon in the left panel to enter the default Builder mode
3. Select the Stack for which you want to set the layout to be "Free Flow Layout"
4. Under "Board Options" in the left panel, select "FreeFlowLayout" from the drop-down selector.

Grid Snap

Fighting pixels to get Widgets to line up can be a challenge in the Free Layout mode. In order to make lining up Widgets easier, Free Flow Layout comes with default grid snap of 10 pixels. This means that any time you re-size or position a Widget in Free Flow Layout mode, it may shift a little in order to "snap" into position. This makes it much easier to line up Widgets on a Board.

Deprecation of Free Flow Layouts

Free Flow Layout of widgets has been deprecated in AppBoard v2.4 and higher. However, existing archives from AppBoard 2.3 that contain Boards using Free Flow Layout will continue to use Free Flow Layout when imported (restored) into v2.4.

Legacy support for the Free Flow Layout is available by enabling the deprecated layout selector that was available in v2.3. You may want to enable the selector in these cases:

• After restoring a Board that is in Free Flow Layout, you want to convert it to Basic Layout by temporarily activating the layout selector.
• You have a Board that must be designed using Free Flow Layout. (Note: this feature is not supported in versions 2.4 or higher)

To activate the layout selector, change the following configuration parameter in [INSTALL_HOME]/server/webapps/enportal/visualizer/assets/config.xml:

<!-- Enable Chooser To Switch Between Layout Options -->
<attribute name="enableFreeFlowLayout"
type="BOOLEAN"
value="true" />