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Panels and Windows

The workspace is made of panels you can arrange as you like, and windows that open over it when you need to do one job.

Panels

A panel is a part of the workspace that stays on screen while you work. There are five:

  • Workflow, the canvas, in the middle: where your nodes sit. See Canvas.
  • Thinky, on the left: your assistant. See One Thinky for everything you have open.
  • Inspector, on the right: the settings of the node you selected. See Inspector.
  • Proposals, along the bottom: changes waiting for a person to accept them. See Proposals.
  • Live Stream, along the bottom: the events your connections receive, as they arrive. See Live Stream.

That is where each one starts. Every panel can be moved, stacked with others, floated, collapsed or closed, the canvas included, and OpenX keeps your arrangement for you (see Layouts).

A tablet and a phone follow your desktop layout until you change them. On a phone the canvas fills the screen and the other panels open from a bar along the bottom; see Working on a laptop and a phone.

Windows

A window is where you do one job, such as API Manager or a node's editor. Most windows are panels you can arrange (see below). A few are pop-ups that open over the workspace and block it, because they ask a question that needs your answer first; they close when you answer and the workspace is as you left it.

Work windows are panels

A node's editor, and every window you work in, opens as a panel, never over the canvas:

  • A node's editor (Manage Query on a Warm Query node, Manage containers on a Database node) opens floating the first time and, after you close it, comes back where you last had it. It stays on its node when you select another, so two Warm Query nodes give two editors.
  • The run and results windows (Deploy, Validation Errors, API Manager) and every set-up window (Cloud Connections, Data Stores, Workspace Settings and the rest) open floating at the right.
  • Each docks anywhere, like any panel, and keeps what it shows when you float, dock or move it.
  • Escape never closes a panel. Close it with its close button.

What stays a pop-up: confirmations, Sign Out, Create New Workspace, a connected app's Rotate and Session expired. See Node editors and work windows as panels.

One title bar

Every panel and every window wears the same slim strip across its top: its title bar.

  • The name is at the left, on one line. A name too long for the strip is cut short; point at it to read the whole name. When panels share one place, their names are tabs in this one bar.
  • The panel's own buttons sit next. Thinky has New conversation, Past conversations and Clear this conversation there, and a node's header in the Inspector has its on and off switch and its delete button. A panel with no buttons of its own shows none.
  • The panel's menu (three dots) holds what you can do to the panel itself: maximise, collapse, close, add a panel, move it, float it, or put it back where it started.
  • The close button is at the right, always grey, and named for its panel, for example Close Inspector.

The bar is the same height on every panel and window, and the space inside each one is the same, so what you are looking at gets the room, not the frame around it. No panel has a colour of its own, and no title bar has a settings gear: a panel's own settings stay inside the panel. See Panel controls for every button and menu item.

Moving and stacking panels

Press on a panel's title bar (its empty part, not a button) and drag. Once the pointer has moved a little, a box shows exactly where the panel will land; let go to put it there, or press Escape to leave everything as it was. You can drop a panel:

  • on the left, right or bottom edge of the workspace;
  • beside another panel, on any of its four sides, so the two are stacked, each with its own bar;
  • on another panel's title bar, so the two share one place as tabs. The tabs slide apart to show where the new one goes.

Stacked or tabbed is your choice each time. A panel's menu has Move to, which lists every one of those places, so you can move a panel without dragging at all.

The thin line between two panels is a divider: drag it to give one panel more room and the other less. A panel never shrinks below the size it needs, and a double-click on a divider puts it back where it started.

Floating panels

Float in a panel's menu lifts it out to float over the workspace. A floating panel stays inside the window, even when the window gets smaller. To dock it again, drag its title bar to a place, or use Move to. A panel brought back from the View menu, or the Inspector brought back by clicking a node, opens floating at the right, clear of the node you clicked.

Collapse

Collapse in the menu of a panel on the left, right or bottom folds its side down to a thin strip, giving the room to the rest. The strip holds one small button for each panel on that side, for example Expand Inspector; press it and the side opens again at the size it had. A collapsed panel keeps what it was showing, where you had scrolled to and anything you were typing. The Live Stream stops drawing new events while it is collapsed and shows the newest when it opens. The canvas does not collapse; you close it instead. If you select a node while the Inspector is collapsed, its side opens by itself so you can see the node.

Closing and bringing panels back

The close button closes a panel. A middle-click on a panel's title bar or its tab closes it too. Closing a panel removes it from view, never its work: a draft you were typing is still there when it comes back. Each panel has a way back:

  • Thinky, Workflow, Live Stream and Proposals: the View menu;
  • Inspector: click a node on the canvas;
  • any closed panel: Add panel in another panel's menu.

If you close every panel, the workspace says so and offers a button to open each one. If a panel looks missing, see Getting a panel back.

A pop-up's close button says Close dialog and closes it. A work window closes like any panel.

An empty panel

A panel with nothing in it yet says so in one calm sentence: what will appear there and how to get it. Every panel shows it the same way, in the same box, with a Read more link where there is a page to read. The Inspector says "Select a node to inspect it."; the canvas with no nodes tells you to add your first node from the Node Bank; Proposals says no changes are waiting for you; Thinky says what you can ask it; the Live Stream says no impulses have arrived yet and links to connecting your data.

A panel that is still loading, or whose connection is down, says that instead, never the empty sentence. A filter that hides every row is not an empty panel either: the Live Stream says "No impulses match the current filters." See A panel says nothing is there yet.

Panel and workspace titles

The canvas wears the same title bar as every panel, and its name is the workspace's (inside a surface, the surface, with the workspace before it as a link back). It is drawn at a panel title's size and weight in white, so it is never quieter than the panels around it.

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