Building Tips
When you start building your application, here are the main questions to ask yourself to better organize and manage your application with PandaSuite.
Responsive and layout management
When creating a new project, it automatically has a fixed aspect ratio which means that your design grows proportionally to the size of the screen, but margins may appear on a screen with another ratio.
To make your application automatically adapt to different screen sizes, you have two possibilities:
- create a responsive application (one layout): your application has the same design and orientation on all devices. Activate the Size & Position Scale mode and select each object on your screen to define its responsive settings.
- create an application with several layouts (adaptive): your application has one or several designs adapted to each type of screen. The right layout will be automatically displayed depending on the device (mobile or tablet for example).
💡To know: when you create a new layout, you have the choice between creating a blank layout or starting from an existing layout. Thus, we recommend that you finalize the first layout before creating the other. Any changes you make to one layout afterwards must be made to the other. You can save time by using the Copy and Paste feature between projects
Number of screens
You can create an unlimited number of screens in your application.
🤷 The screen is the basic unit of your application. Each screen corresponds to a major step in the user journey: authentication, welcome, article, news...
💡 In terms of user experience, you have to take into account that each screen is independent and that there is a loading at each display. If you want to create transition effects, you can use foreground/background or create new states.
To create a new screen, click on the
+ Add screen in the screens window.
Each screen is independent: it is up to you to create the links between screens with the
Change screen action.
💡 The order of the screens only makes sense if you enable Magazine mode or create a Go to Next/Back screen action.
Screen versus state
Each screen has a default state. If you want to animate your screen, you can create transitions using new states. You can create new independent states or linked states. The linked state retains all the characteristics of the initial state and a link to this other state. It is the state that allows you to create transitions and animations.
When you create a linked state and change the layout of your objects, a transition is applied and your objects are animated.
Global elements
While your screens are independent,
the foreground and background are global to the application: they are located above and below your screens. The foreground in particular allows you to create visual elements that are global to your application (e.g. a navigation bar) and to insert elements that have a persistent use in your application (e.g. an HTTP component).
To edit the foreground and background, go to your
Project level.
Language management
You can
add several languages to your application. The advantage is that you create a single layout of your project and insert the translated content (text, images) in the different languages. There is no automatic translation, it is up to you to translate the texts beforehand.
To add new languages, go to the
Project properties.
Choose the initial language of the project, the one in which you have worked.
To add a new language, search for this language and click on the
Add button.
App size
There are no storage limitations with PandaSuite. Nevertheless it is important to control the
size of the app for your users, especially if you are delivering a native app to your audience's personal device. This is an important criterion for your users to monitor their available space.
💡 Each application has a size in megabytes that determines how much storage it needs to run on users' devices. Since storage space is limited, it is important that an application offers a reasonable size to the user.
One or multiple projects?
With the
Multi and
Full plans, you have the possibility to distribute several projects within the same application. Your application becomes a content hub where you can manage content and access.
A project corresponds to a specific content that addresses an audience. If you want to create other content for other targets, you can create other projects and make them accessible within the same interface.
🕵 Let's take the example of an application that gathers all business materials for the ACME salespeople. It is possible to integrate within this application the corporate sales materials accessible to all and to create channels (folders) for each category of sales representatives (B2B, EMEA, Africa etc...). You can send each sales person the access link to their content.
Teamwork
It is not yet possible to work simultaneously on the same project. We recommend that you break down your project into several projects (sandbox projects and a master project) and combine them into one project by
copying and pasting between projects.
