The card is the top level view. As mentioned in the introduction a dashboard can contain many cards, but only one can be visible at a time. Every card must have a unique name, allowing it to be selected in response to user actions. A card is implemented as a kind of split view. So the discussion of split view below also applies to card (except for setting custom size). Cards can also define a background colour, which will fill the whole background of the dashboard. Individual contents can set their own background colours, which only affects their individual view rectangles. The default background colour is white.
When the Card is selected, the layout of the views will be displayed accordingly in the Card panel. Also, right-clicking on the Card then "Default Layout" shows options available for setting the layout of the Card, as shown in Figure 3.1, “Layout”. The name, background colour, custom size (width and height in pixels) and direction of the Card can be changed from here.
Single View: A Single View, as seen from the name, will only 1 view can be seen.
Horizontal Split: A Horizontal Split will split the dashboard into 2 halves and each view placed beside each other. Only 2 views can be seen in the dashboard.
Vertical Split: A Vertical Split will split the dashboard into half and 1 view will be on top of the other. Like the Horizontal Split, only 2 views can be seen in the dashboard.
Quartered View: A Quartered View will split the dashboard into 4 equal squares.
Name: Set a unique name for the card.
Background: Set a colour to fill the whole background of the dashboard.
Direction: Set the direction of the card to be Horizontal or Vertical.
Custom Size: Each card can have a custom width and custom height. A custom size of 0 means to use the perspective size. You can set the width or height on a card-by-card basis. However, when the Dynamic HTML Size option for Perspective is enabled, it will override the custom card size settings.
After setting the Default Layout, a user can still add view(s) to the dashboard manually.