Forget Frameworks: Create Your Own Flexible Grid System

Forget Frameworks:
Create Your Own Flexible Grid System

Steve Hickey — UI Designer & Front-End Developer

Hi, I’m Steve.
I design/code applications for Fresh Tilled Soil in Watertown.

We Use Grids Because They’re Awesome
They create order from chaos.

But they can be diﬀicult to do well on the web. This is why we
have so many frameworks, but they have issues.

<div class="row">
<h2 class="span4">It slices!</h2>
<h2 class="span4">It dices!</h2>
<h2 class="span4">It juliennes!</h2>
</div>

/* ================================================================== */

.row { margin-left: -20px; }
.row:before, .row:after { display: table; line-height: 0; content: ""; }
.row:after { clear: both; }

.span4 { width: 300px; }

Let me tell you a story about Pat and Andy...

Marketing: Looks great, but it needs our partner quotes. We need
to make them feel special.

CEO: Close, but where’s my picture? I work very hard! In fact, get
all the execs on here.
But make them smaller than me.

CTO: I hear responsive design is pretty big right now. Why isn’t this
responsive, aren’t we paying you enough?

The stress has made them lunatics.
We can prevent this from happening to you.

Let’s Get SASS-y
SASS is a CSS pre-processor. It allows us to do things like:

1. Nest selectors
2. Use variables
3. Extend classes with mixins
4. Avoid repetition

We’ll use SASS to apply styles to pre-existing semantic classes
with some mixins.

These styles will be calculated with SASS functions so our
elements adjust automatically when we change variables.

First, our markup. Our class names are all semantic and clean.

<div class="container">
<header role="banner">...</header>
<div role="main">
<section class="hero">...</section>
<section class="partner-quotes">
<h2>Quotes From Our Partners</h2>
<div class="cosby">...</div>
<div class="jobs">...</div>
<div class="wilde">...</div>
<div class="letterman">...</div>
<div class="franklin">...</div>
<div class="twain">...</div>
</section>
<section class="executive-team">
<h2>Our Executive Team</h2>
<div class="ceo">...</div>
<div class="other-executives">
<div class="cto">...</div>
<div class="cmo">...</div>
<div class="coo">...</div>
<div class="cio">...</div>
</div>
</section>
</div>
<footer role="contentinfo">...</footer>
</div>

Next, our grid. I used this one because math is hard.

• Total width of 1000px.
• 6 columns @ 150px wide each
• 20px gutters

Percentages are calculated with target / context = result
to get flexible widths: 15% columns with 2% gutters.

We’ll store this information in some SASS variables.

$max-width:        1000px; // set page max-width
$column-width:     15%;     // set column width
$gutter-width:     2%;      // set gutter width
$maximum-columns: 6;       // set max number of columns

Then we’ll define some helpful mixins. They have use beyond
our grid system and should be defined globally.

@mixin clearfix {
zoom: 1;
&:before, &:after { content: ""; display: table; }
&:after { clear: both; }
}

@mixin border-box {
-webkit-box-sizing: border-box;
-moz-box-sizing: border-box;
box-sizing: border-box;
}

Now, the fun stuﬀ:
This function uses variables to make flexible column widths.

@function columns($columns, $container-columns: $maximum-columns) {
$width:
$columns * $column-width + ($columns - 1) * $gutter-width;
$container-width:
$container-columns * $column-width + ($container-columns - 1) * $gutter-width;
@return percentage($width / $container-width);
}

* Borrowed and modified from the excellent Bourbon.io

And this function helps us get the correct width for gutters.

@function gutter($container-columns: $maximum-columns, $gutter: $gutter-width) {
$container-width:
$container-columns * $column-width + ($container-columns - 1) * $gutter-width;
@return percentage($gutter / $container-width);
}

* Borrowed and modified from the excellent Bourbon.io

We’ll use these functions on elements like so:

div.parent {
width: columns(3); // takes 1 arg: column span
margin-right: gutter; // no args required

div.child {
width: columns(1, 3); // takes 2 args: span, span of parent
margin-right: gutter(3); // takes 1 arg: span of parent
}
}

And they’ll output this:

div.parent {
width: 49%; // spans 3 columns
margin-right: 2%; // 1 gutter width
}

div.parent div.child {
width: 30.61224%; // spans 1 column, 3 column parent
margin-right: 4.08163%; // 1 gutter width, 3 column parent
}

For a full grid system we’ll need to define a few more behaviors.
This mixin helps to control nesting elements.

@mixin nesting {
padding: 0; // no padding so nested elements fit

& > div { // affect only immediate children
float: left;
margin-right: gutter;
@include border-box; // math is hard. let’s use border-box
}
}

And this one tells elements to behave like rows.

@mixin row {
width: 100%; // make sure to fill its container
max-width: $max-width; // but no more than our max width
margin: 0 auto;
@include clearfix; // clear our floats
@include nesting; // add nesting styles to rows
}

For a more advanced layout we’ll need to oﬀset elements. This
function handles the calculations for us.

@function offset-columns($columns) {
$margin: $columns * $column-width + $columns * $gutter-width;
@return $margin;
}

And we can apply it using our oﬀset mixin.

@mixin offset($from-direction: left, $columns) {
@if $from-direction == left {
float: left;
margin-left: offset-columns($columns);
}
@if $from-direction == right {
float: right;
margin-right: offset-columns($columns);
}
}

There’s one more pesky problem to deal with:
the last element in any row...

@mixin last {
margin-right: 0;
float: right;
}

Note:
I tried :last-child, :first-child and :nth-child(). They would be
good solutions, but support is bad or intent is wrong.

The Final Product
github.com/freshtilledsoil/forget-frameworks-demo-bfe

Thanks!
@stevehickeydsgn
http://stevehickeydesign.com
http://freshtilledsoil.com

Forget Frameworks: Create Your Own Flexible Grid System

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