Flow Panel Overflow
In the Introduction to Flow Panels, we only dealt with Flow Panels that exist on a single page. This can suffice, however there are times where, as a designer, you won’t know how many items the user will add to the Flow Panel.
This presents a problem from a template layout perspective. If you can’t be certain how many items a user will choose, and the business requirements states that you must handle various permutations, you will need the Flow Panel to respond to its contents.
Text Overflow Rules is covered in this section. Refer to this section for configuration information.
Basic Flow Panel Overflow
Continuing with the Fruit Menu catalog item configured in Making A Flow Panel User Configurable, unapproved the Fruit Menu catalog item and then open it in the Catalog Items view.
Select the Flow Panel and add items until the number of items exceeds the bounds of the flow panel.
Note: Like text overflow, if all items in the flow panel fit, then Overflow will not take effect.
Below we see a Flow Panel with 9 items in it. This is many items will not fit on one page.
Now that we have added enough content to the Flow Panel, we need to configure To Keep things simple, we will overflow content from the first page to the second.
Configure Content Overflow
In this section, we will configure the content to flow from the first page to the second page.
- Add a new page
- For the purposes of continuity, we’ve added a header and title. However, this is purely cosmetic.
- Add a Flow Panel to Page 2.
- Important: Flow Panels can only overflow to other Flow Panels.
- Change the label to “Fruit List Continued”.
Below is what our screen should look like.
Add Overflow Rule
Now, we will add an overflow rule to the document.
- Click on page 1 and select the original overflow panel
- Ensure "Exclude Item" is checked.
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Click the “Rules” tab, then click “Add +” next to the Overflow rule.
- Configure the Overflow Rule Configuration dialog window as follows:
- Leave type as "Existing Page" and for the Overflow Page, select page 2.
- For the Overflow Box, select the Fruit List Continued. This is the of the flow panel that content will overflow to.
Save the document and order it for configuration. Once configured, build a preview of the catalog item.
In reviewing the PDF, we can observe the following:
- The first 4 items were placed on the first page.
- Since there was no more room on the first, items were moved to page 2.