Design tips

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1. Overview

A collection of design tips for designing dashboards, reports, and other views.

2. Brush editor

When setting a color in the Properties window, you can choose or enter one a number of ways:

Type a color name into the text box or choose one from the list that appears.
Type or paste in a hex code or RGB/RGBA value like those described below to precisely enter or paste in any color.
Click the ... or down arrow button to open a set of inputs and sliders you can use to interactively find and adjust your color.

Entering hex values for a color property

Hex codes and other color codes like the following are common, and make it easy to to paste in an existing color you have from another app.

You can also copy one from one property and paste it into another using Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V or ⌘C and ⌘V on your keyboard.

Format	Sample	Color
3 hex characters	#F00	Red
3 hex characters without hashmark	F0F	Fuchsia
6 hex characters	#FFFFFF	White
6 hex characters without hashmark	808080	Gray
8 hex characters	#FF00007F	Red at 50% Opacity
rgb()	rgb(255,255,0)	Yellow
rgba()	rgba(0,255,255,0.5)	Aqua with 50% Opacity
RGB values with spaces	255 255 255	White
RGB values with commas	255,255,255	White
RGBA values with spaces	255 255 0 0.75	Yellow with 75% Opacity
color name with alpha	red 0.5	Red with 50% Opacity
3 hex characters with alpha	333 .5	#333333 with 50% Opacity
6 hex characters with alpha	696969 .5	DimGray with 50% Opacity

When the Brush dropdown appears, you can change it from Solid Color to more complex fill options such as:

Linear Gradient
Radial Gradient
Image
Hatching

3. Default font settings

You can define the font settings for the whole dashboard or template. All items on the dashboard will default to these settings, but you can still override them when necessary by setting font properties separately on an individual item.

With nothing selected on the dashboard, open the Properties window to the Design tab and open the Font & Text properties (previously the Text tab). Or right-click on an empty area of the canvas and Quick Access Properties will appear with most of the same options (left-click in previous versions).

Note

All web browsers render fonts slightly differently. For example, this may cause a table visualization in one browser to show a scrollbar that does not appear in another. In most cases, you can resolve such issues by resizing the table a bit larger. Alternatively, check that the sizing looks correct in other browsers.

4. Resize action

You can add a Resize script action on a view such as a dashboard to respond when the view is resized. This may occur when the user resizes their browser or when the orientation is changed on the user's device (orientation changes may not always be detected because some devices fire a different event in this situation).

Scripting the Resize action may be useful for responsive design. For example:

Add a script to detect a change in screen width (e.g., from 500 px to 1200 px), and then show or hide layers in response.
Add a script to detect a change in screen width, and then redirect to another dashboard more suited for the size of the screen.

See Using interactions for details on adding actions in the Properties window.

5. Align content

As you drag or resize any item, contextual guidelines (dotted lines) appear to help you align it with other content.

When your item snaps into alignment with another, a red line is displayed along the points that are being aligned (such as the center or edge of each element), and the outer boundaries of the other items appear.

Contextual guidelines for snapping to other controls

If you want to temporarily disable snapping to other content, hold the Alt or Option key while dragging or resizing.

If the snap grid is enabled, positions are also snapped to the grid of dots that appear while dragging or resizing. You can turn this off in the the status bar or by holding the Ctrl (control) key.

5.1. Arrange multiple items

When multiple elements are selected, you can adjust their alignment using the Arrange option on the toolbar.

You can use these options to quickly distribute, align, and size.

Note

The options Match Width and Match Height will match the last-selected item, which will be indicated by bold borders.

6. Resize within template grid

Double-click the resize handle of an element that has been placed within a template grid cell to expand/contract that side or corner to the template cell's edge or corner.

Double-click resize handle to expand that side to cell edge

7. Select overlapping items

When elements are overlapping each other, it can be harder to select elements below the one on top when you want to re-position them or change their settings.

You can right-click or long-tap any of these elements and choose Select to choose from a list of the overlapping items.

Right-click one of the overlapping elements to select others

Tip

Another option is to use the Layers window to select from a list of all elements.

8. Upload multiple files

Instead of using drag-and-drop, you can upload one or more image files, maps, or diagrams to folders in the Explore window using a context menu option.

For example, right-click on the Images folder and select Upload File.