Layouts are where you can split the screen into different zones and “Layout‟ content where you would like it to appear. The Layout Designer offers a true “What You See Is What You Get‟ drag and drop experience. The Layout Designer supports multi-zone layering and transparency with full Alpha Channel support that allows static/dynamic text and PNG images with transparent backgrounds to be overlaid on top of a video asset. Within Layouts you can add images, video, text, scrolling, products, events information, web pages, custom HTML5 widgets, dates/times, weather, external source content (subject to hardware/player) etc…
When you click on the ‘Create New‘ button from the Layouts page, you are taken to the Menu Properties (below) page where you define the properties of the menu.
Properties
This is where you are able to set the properties of the layout.
Before you can design and build out your Layout, you need to at the minimum:
a) Give the layout a name
b) Define the resolution that the Layout needs to be. If this is going to be “full screen” the chances are that the resolution will need to be 1920×1080 (landscape). If the Layout is going to sit inside a zone with any other 3rd party content management application (that supports HTML5 URL‟s), you will set the resolution to match that of the zone. You are able to choose a background image or video for your Layout. In lieu of defining a background image/video, you can assign a zone within the Layout. Where supported you can also set the background to be a video providing it is in an MP4 (H.264) format, but support will depend on the hardware being used.
Note: If you are using Playlists within your Layout, do not define a background image/video. Instead, create a zone and set the layer as ‘0’, then add your background image/video to that zone.
Save: Saves/creates your Layout.
Save and go to Designer: Saves/creates your Layout and then takes you to the Layout Designer.
Save and Go View URL: Saves/creates your settings and takes you to the View URL for previewing a full resolution copy of your Layout. This is also the URL that you can schedule in any 3rd Party Digital Signage Software/CMS that supports HTML5 URL‟s.
Delete: Once deleted, if this menu is in use somewhere it will disappear from your screens. If you delete by accident, contact helpdesk@pinghd.com and the support team will be able to restore this for you.
Players tab: From the drop down above, you are able to manually pick out which Players this Layout can be sent to. This is particularly useful when using the Themes function. Alternatively the Layout can be scheduled to the Player (see section 0, Schedule). You are also able to remove the Player from the selected Layout.
Links tab: Links would be used in situations where you are building a touch screen application. You would need to make a master Layout that serves as the “Home‟ page. Within the Layout Designer, if you‟ve added an image, you can right click on that image and link it to another Layout. If you need a transparent button over Text then you can add a transparent PNG file with nothing in the PNG file itself which you can then overlay on the Text and then use the transparent PNG file to link to the other Layout:
Designer
The Designer is where the layout design is created. Please see: Understanding the Layout Designer
Preview
Preview allows you to preview your layout in a new tab in your browser. If the resolution of the layout is larger than you computer screen, you may need to zoom out to view the full preview.
Tip: In Google Chrome, click on the control panel icon in the top right of your browser and select the zoom in and out functions: