# Tableau Layout Containers: Part 2 - Tableau Menu Interface

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2014-10-28
- **Format:** Video · 19 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Data visualisation
- **Tools:** Tableau (dashboards, formatting, layout containers)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/tableau-layout-containers-part-2-tableau-menu-interface
- **Watch:** https://youtu.be/gvXoMAuS6C8

This is the second part of my Tableau layout containers series, where I build a semi-responsive homepage menu system from scratch. I walk through nesting horizontal and vertical containers, using colour and blank spaces as building aids, and placing icons and text to create a dynamic user interface.

## Key takeaways

- Use temporary container colouring to make the nested layout structure visible while you build, then strip it out at the end
- Drop blank spaces into containers as placeholders so you have somewhere to drag the next item, deleting them once the structure is set
- Vertical and horizontal containers with no fixed height or width automatically distribute their contents equally
- The dashboard layout hierarchy panel is the key guide for confirming items landed where you intended
- Shapes or images set to fill the entire view shrink and grow with available space, giving a fake-responsive feel; sheets are better than images because you can attach actions to them

## Chapters

- 0:00 Reviewing the finished menu structure
- 1:03 Reading the layout hierarchy
- 3:15 Starting a new dashboard
- 5:11 Building the title and description area
- 7:22 Creating five vertical menu containers
- 10:04 Adding menu text and icons
- 12:38 Sizing and distributing images
- 15:56 Removing colour and final polish
- 17:54 Sheets versus images and next steps

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/tableau-layout-containers-part-2-tableau-menu-interface

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just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena