Lay out project screens in a simulation of the client's display

Use the Layout tool to lay out — that is, to resize, reposition, and reorder — your project screens in a simulation of the client's display.

By default, when you create a new project screen, it is created at your project's full display resolution. (You selected the display resolution when you created the project itself, but you can also convert the resolution after the fact, if necessary.) Therefore, when you open two screens at the same time, the second screen will cover the first.

That works well enough for a simple project with only a few screens, but in a more complex project with many screens and sub-screens, you will want to arrange the screens so that they fit together and not overlap. You can use the Layout tool to do that.

When you make changes to a screen in the Layout tool, the screen's attributes are automatically updated to reflect the changes. For example, when you resize a screen, the screen's Width and Height attributes are updated. And when you reposition a screen, the screen's Top and Left attributes are updated. For more information, see Screen Attributes. The changes are not actually saved, however, until you close the screen file in the development environment.

To lay out your project screens:

1. In the Graphics tab of the Project Explorer, double-click Layout.

   The Layout tool is opened as a new tab in the Screen/Worksheet Editor area, and all currently open project screens are displayed in the tool. The order of the screens in the tool is determined by the order of screens' tabs in the editor area, so that the left-most tab is in the back and the right-most tab is in the front.

2. Make sure all of the project screens that you want to lay out are included in the Layout tool:

   1. To add a screen to the Layout tool, double-click it in the Project Explorer.

      The screen file is opened for editing, and it is also added to the Layout tool.

   2. To remove a screen from the Layout tool, click the Close icon (×) in the screen's tab.

      The screen file is saved and closed, and it is also removed from the Layout tool.

   3. To reorder a screen in the Layout tool — that is, to bring it to the front or send it to the back — click and drag the screen's tab right or left in the editor area.

3. Configure the project settings to show or hide whichever elements of the Viewer program window — for example, the Title Bar, the Menu Bar, the window border, and so on — that you want have displayed to users during project run time.

   For more information, see Viewer tab.

   Note: This applies only when the Windows-based Viewer program (that is, either Secure Viewer or the local Viewer module) is used to view the project screens. It does not apply when Web Thin Client or Mobile Access is used, because then the browser is the program window.

   The simulated display in the Layout tool is updated to reflect the changes in the project settings.

4. Lay out your project screens as needed:

   1. To resize a screen, click and drag the edge of the screen.

   2. To reposition a screen, click and drag the middle of the screen.

   3. To arrange a screen, right-click in the screen, and then on the shortcut menu, click the appropriate command.

      For example, click Top Left to move the screen to the top-left corner of the full display.

   Each time you change a screen, a message is displayed asking you to confirm the change. You can choose to disable the messages and update the screen attributes without confirmation. You can also re-enable the messages later, if necessary. For more information, see Preferences tab.

When you have finished laying out your project screens, you might want to save them as a screen group so that you can open them all together, at the same time, with a single command. For more information, see Screen Group Folder.