Change a board's layout
The layout page composes the board's shape from about a dozen answers — where the dock sits, how wide it is, how many cards and buttons, which edges carry a text bar — and re-fits the board to any of them.
There is no catalogue of layouts to pick from, and there is nothing to drag on the board itself. A layout is composed from about a dozen answers — one big stage or two, a column beside it or not, how many cards, how many buttons, which edges carry a text bar — and the board redraws itself to fit whatever you answer.
That is why nothing you chose when the board was created is final. Every answer, including the screen’s size and shape, can be changed later and the board re-fits.
The five named areas, and the two ways a board arranges them.
The Layout card on the editor's first page, drawn as the board's own shape with its answers summarised.
The board goes away while you compose
Open Layout and the live board is replaced by a flat schematic of itself.
The composing canvas: every area named, nothing pictured, and the seams draggable.
This is deliberate and it is worth understanding, because it looks at first like the board has broken. Live content hides the structure you are editing — a photo scene fills the stage edge to edge, and you cannot see what you are moving. So each area is drawn as a flat colour with its name on it, and the widget assigned to it named underneath rather than drawn.
That also answers the only question a layout change really raises: what am I about to lose. The names tell you.
Nothing is committed while you are here, and the board underneath keeps rendering what it had. Discard at the foot of the rail throws the draft away. The ← arrow is what applies it — leaving the page is the commit, and the board re-renders once, as you go. There is no Save button on this page at all, because there is nothing to save until the board has adopted the layout.
Style: the three shapes a board can take
Split, Overlay and Fullscreen, drawn rather than named.
Split gives the content one part of the screen and puts everything else in a dock along one edge — a column on the left or right in landscape, a band across the top or bottom in portrait. It is the ordinary answer.
Overlay runs the content edge to edge and floats the cards and buttons over it, in the corners. Use it where the content is a photograph or a video that deserves the whole screen and the rest is secondary.
Overlay: the content keeps the screen, the cards and buttons float over its corners.
Fullscreen is the stage on its own. Everything else disappears — but it is not thrown away: the cards, the buttons and the side list are kept dormant, so switching back to Split restores the shape you had rather than an empty one.
Splitting the content in two
The pill at the bottom of the stage reads Split stage while there is one, and Combine once there are two.
Two stages are two independent boards sharing a screen: each plays its own content, its own scenes, and its own takeovers. An announcement interrupting the left half leaves the right half alone.
The seams
Every proportion on the board is a grip on the line it moves.
Proportions are dragged, not typed. Each seam carries a grip and shows a live percentage while you move it, with marks at the two limits:
- the dock may take between 16% and 40% of the screen,
- a split stage divides anywhere between 30/70 and 70/30,
- in Overlay, each float has a bar on its free edge — the card stack is pinned right so its left edge widens it, the button row is pinned to the bottom so its top edge grows it.
There is no dock-width slider anywhere in the rail, on purpose: the grip on the seam says where the edge is as well as how wide the dock has become, and a slider could only ever say the second thing.
Push a seam past its limit and the layout changes kind rather than stopping: a second stage squeezed too narrow becomes the side list, and a side list dragged wide enough becomes a second stage. Both directions work, so it is never a trap.
The rows
The answers that have no shape to point at, each led by its area's own colour.
| Row | What it does | When to change it |
|---|---|---|
| Dock side | Which edge the dock sits on, left or right | The screen is beside a doorway or a corner and one side reads better than the other |
| Side list | Adds the tall column at the top of the dock | The board should carry a running list — today’s bookings, expected visitors — beside its main content |
| Cards | The row of 16:9 information cards | A clock, the weather or a summary should be visible without taking the stage |
| Buttons | The row of 3:4 action tiles | Somebody has to be able to press or scan something |
| Card band / Button band | Which edge each band sits on, in portrait | Buttons default to the bottom because that is where a hand reaches on a tall screen; move them only if something else needs that edge |
| Reserved area | Keeps the bottom of the stage clear | The screen is a wireless-sharing display, so the device paints its own connection details there |
A control that cannot do anything on this board is hidden, not greyed out — a side list is impossible in Overlay and in portrait, so the row is simply absent there. Do not go looking for it.
Text bars
Up to three bars, no more than two on a side, each with its own edge, size and colour.
A board can carry up to three text bars and no more than two on any one edge. Each one names its edge, its Size and its Colour — Match board or one of seven fixed colours, for the notice that has to look different from everything else on the screen.
Top and bottom bars run across the full width and own the corners. Left and Right bars run vertically, taking the height between the top and bottom ones, and their text stands on end — Chinese and Japanese read down the band naturally, and Latin letters and digits turn a quarter turn with them.
Reserved area
Reserved area appears only on a 43-inch-or-larger landscape 16:9 board, and only exists for one reason: a wireless-sharing display paints its own connection information — the room name, the code to join — over the bottom of the screen, and that card is not something Offision draws or can move.
Turning it on keeps the bottom strip of the main stage clear. Nothing else shrinks: the dock keeps its full height, and the cards and buttons keep their count. A bottom text bar is allowed to sit inside that strip rather than adding to it, so the stage never pays for the same pixels twice.
Check it worked
Leave the page with the ← arrow, which applies the layout, then Save. The board re-renders once with its new shape.
Anything that no longer has a place is not deleted — put the card or the button back and its widget returns with it. That is what makes composing safe to experiment with: it is the layout that changed, not the content.
What this does not control
- What goes in each place — see Put content on a board.
- The screen’s size, shape and orientation. Those are on the Screen page, one level up in the rail, and changing them re-fits the layout underneath rather than replacing it.
- How large the text is. The board’s Font size is a display setting, not a layout one, and it deliberately does not change the size of the areas — only what is written inside them.