In a Tableau dashboard, when should you use tiled layout instead of floating objects?

## What tiled and floating actually mean A Tableau dashboard is a canvas you place objects on: worksheets, legends, filter cards, parameter controls, text, images, web page objects, blanks, buttons and layout containers. Every object is added in one of two modes. A **tiled** object joins the dashboard's layout tree. It snaps into position beside its neighbours, it cannot overlap anything else, and when the available space changes, the object grows or shrinks with the container that holds it. A **floating** object is pinned to explicit coordinates — an x/y position plus a width and height, all in pixels, editable in the Layout pane — and lives on its own layer stacked above the tiled ones. It can sit on top of a worksheet, and it does not move or resize when anything around it changes. ## Layout containers are the mechanism behind tiling Tiling is not a grid. It is a tree of nested **horizontal** and **vertical layout containers**. A horizontal container lays its children out side by side and divides the width between them; a vertical container stacks them and divides the height. When you drag a worksheet onto a dashboard, Tableau silently creates or extends these containers for you, which is why a dashboard assembled by dragging alone often has a container structure the author never intended — and why objects then resize in surprising ways. The practical habit is to build the container skeleton first (a vertical container for the page, horizontal containers for each row), then drop worksheets into it. The Item hierarchy in the Layout pane shows the tree and is the fastest way to see what is actually nested inside what. **Blank** objects are used as deliberate spacers inside containers; a container can also be told to distribute its space evenly among its children. ## Dashboard sizing decides how much this matters A dashboard's size is set to one of three modes: - **Fixed size** — the dashboard is always rendered at the exact pixel dimensions you chose; a browser that is larger shows whitespace and one that is smaller scrolls or scales it. Nothing reflows, so floating is comparatively safe here. - **Automatic** — the dashboard fills whatever space the browser gives it, and tiled containers redistribute space continuously. Floating objects do **not** participate, so they drift out of alignment as the window changes. - **Range** — reflows between a minimum and a maximum size, then behaves like fixed outside that band. Fixed size also has a performance and consistency argument: every viewer sees the same render, and server-side image/PDF rendering is predictable. Automatic gives a better fit on varied screens at the cost of layouts that must be built to survive resizing — that is, built from containers. ## Device layouts A dashboard can carry additional **device layouts** (desktop, tablet, phone) on top of its default layout. Each device layout can either inherit the default arrangement or be customized — reordering objects, dropping some, changing sizing. Tableau will generate a phone layout for you, typically stacking the objects vertically. Inheritance is the reason tiled dashboards port well: containers restack. Floating objects hold their absolute coordinates, so on a narrow phone layout they overlap or fall off the canvas. ## When floating is the right answer Floating is not a bad practice; it is a specific tool. - A legend, filter card or annotation placed over empty space inside a map or scatterplot. - A KPI strip or a title bar that must sit exactly at a fixed offset in a fixed-size dashboard. - A show/hide container (a floating container toggled by a button) used as a slide-out filter panel — this only works floating, since it must overlay content rather than push it aside. - Navigation buttons and images layered over a background. The rule of thumb: if the object is part of the page's structure, tile it; if it is deliberately *on top of* the page, float it. ## What goes wrong The classic failure is a dashboard built entirely from floating objects at the author's monitor size. It is quick to build — everything lands exactly where you drag it — and it breaks for everyone with a different resolution, on the phone layout, and after any object is added. The second failure is fighting an accidental container tree: an object refuses to resize the way you want because it sits three levels deep inside containers you did not create. Open the Item hierarchy and fix the nesting rather than converting the object to floating. ## Stories, briefly A dashboard is one surface. A **story** is a sequence of story points, each capturing a sheet or dashboard in a particular state with a caption, used when the deliverable is a guided narrative rather than an exploration surface. Layout choices above apply to the dashboards a story points at, not to the story frame itself.