WebExp2 Experimenter's Manual - School of Informatics - University ...

Figure 15: A sample layout split into 3 columns and 3 rows, showing padding and alignment.
5.7.5 Further advice about layouts
Note that specifying the horizontal and vertical layout parameters of rows, columns and alignment does not
really create a grid of boundaries, but instead creates a framework used for determining position. So for example,
components wider than a column are aligned with respect to the column but will extend outside the width of
that column.
Note that visual components are placed in the layout from the top left to the bottom right, in the order in which
they appear in your xml. Each component is associated with a particular ‘cell’ and is aligned with respect to
that cell’s boundaries according to the alignment values of that row and column. You may not want to place a
component in every cell, and some of the following options are useful:
• For an empty cell, you can specify a completely empty component .
• For an empty spacer cell, specify a text component with no content or colours, along with height or width.
A component will be created at the specified size but will be invisible.
• For a patch of colour, use a text component and specify only dimensions and background colour.
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