JDP Floorplans Explained: The Layout Decision That Saves You Hours

Source: Dev.to

Introduction

Before you write your first component in JDP, there’s one quiet decision that shapes everything that follows: the floorplan.
If you get it right, your UI feels effortless.

What Is a Floorplan?

A floorplan defines the structural layout of a page before content comes into play. It decides:

• where the header lives
• whether navigation exists (left, right, or none)
• where the content goes
• how side panels behave
• how the page responds across devices

Think of it like the blueprint of a building—you don’t decide where the sofa goes before deciding how many rooms the house has. JDP works the same way.

Why Floorplans Matter for Insurance Apps

Insurance apps are not simple landing pages. They are:

• data‑heavy
• navigation‑heavy
• form‑heavy
• multi‑role (agent, customer, admin)
• expected to scale across dozens or hundreds of screens

If every page decided its own layout freely, chaos would be guaranteed. JDP flips the approach:

“Pick the structure first. Then build inside it.”

Floorplans enforce consistency without killing flexibility—exactly what large enterprise apps need.

Common Floorplan Shapes

JDP floorplans usually come in a few familiar shapes:

• I‑shape
• L‑shape
• C‑shape
• R‑shape

You don’t need to memorize these names; you’ll recognize them instantly because they mirror how users already expect apps to behave.

Choosing a Floorplan

Once you choose a floorplan, the following are handled automatically:

• spacing
• alignment
• responsiveness
• accessibility rules

You can then focus on what goes inside the page, not how the page holds itself together. This alone saves hours, sometimes days, across a project.

Configuring Defaults and Overrides

• Set a default floorplan for the entire app.
• Override it for specific routes when needed.

Result:

• 90 % of pages stay consistent
• 10 % get special treatment

This keeps your app clean without boxing you in.

Floorplan vs. Layout

• Floorplan = the overall page structure
• Layout = how content is arranged inside the content area

JDP separates these concerns so you don’t mix structural decisions with content decisions—a surprisingly powerful idea.

Benefits of Using Floorplans

• Pages look consistent without effort
• New developers understand the app faster
• Layout bugs drop drastically
• Reviews become easier
• Design debates disappear

Floorplans quietly enforce good UI discipline, without yelling about it. Good UI isn’t about fancy components; it’s about solid structure. JDP floorplans give you that structure upfront, so you don’t spend the rest of the project fixing layout problems that should never have existed.

Conclusion

Once you start using floorplans properly, you’ll wonder how you ever built large apps without them.