Grid System
A powerful mobile-first grid system for building layouts of all shapes and sizes. Based on a twelve column layout with multiple responsive tiers, Sass mixins, and predefined classes.
Contents
- How It Works
- Quick Start Example
- Grid Options
- Auto-Layout Columns
- Responsive Classes
- Alignment
- Reordering
- Nesting
- Customizing the Grid
- Sass Variables and Mixins
How It Works
Figuration includes a powerful mobile-first grid system for building layouts of all shapes and sizes. It’s based on a 12 column layout and has multiple tiers, one for each media query range. You can use it with Sass mixins or our predefined classes.
At a high level, here’s how the grid system works:
- There are three major components—containers, rows, and columns.
- The grid is built with flexbox and is fully responsive.
- Containers provide a means to center and horizontally pad your site’s contents. Use
.container
for a responsive fixed width or.container-fluid
forwidth: 100%
across all viewport and device sizes. - Rows are wrappers for columns. Each column has horizontal
padding
(called a gutter) for controlling the space between them. Thispadding
is then counteracted on the rows with negative margins. This way, all the content in your columns is visually aligned down the left side (right side inrtl
mode). - In a grid layout, content must be placed within columns and only columns may be immediate children of rows.
- Thanks to flexbox, grid columns without a specified
width
will automatically layout as equal width columns. For example, four instances of.col-sm
will each automatically be 25% wide from the small breakpoint and up. See the auto-layout columns section for more examples. - Column classes indicate the number of columns you’d like to use out of the possible 12 per row. So, if you want three equal-width columns across, you would use
.col-4
. - Column
width
s are set in percentages, so they’re always fluid and sized relative to their parent element. - Columns have horizontal
padding
to create the gutters between individual columns. - You can remove the
margin
from rows andpadding
from columns with.no-gutters
on the.row
. - To make the grid responsive, there are five grid breakpoints, one for each responsive breakpoint: all breakpoints (extra small), small, medium, large, and extra large.
- Grid breakpoints are based on minimum width media queries, meaning they apply to that one breakpoint and all those above it (e.g.,
.col-sm-4
applies to small, medium, large, and extra large devices, but not the firstxs
breakpoint). - You can use predefined grid classes (like
.col-4
) or Sass mixins for more semantic markup.
If you need a reference for working with flexbox, there is an excellent resource over at CSS Tricks with A Complete Guide to Flexbox.
Also, be aware of the limitations and bugs around flexbox, like the inability to use some HTML elements as flex containers.
Sounds good? Great, let’s move on to seeing all that in an example.
Quick Start Example
This example creates three equal-width columns on small, medium, large, and extra large devices using our predefined grid classes. Those columns are centered in the page with the parent .container
.
Examples further down the page add some color, padding, and borders, to the rows and columns to give a better visual example of their relationship. These do not appear in the base Figuration grid.
Grid Options
See how aspects of the Figuration grid system work across multiple devices with this handy table.
The example pixel values are calculated based upon assumption where the average user has a 16px root font size.
Extra small <576px <36em |
Small ≥576px ≥36em |
Medium ≥768px ≥48em |
Large ≥992px ≥62em |
Extra large ≥1200px ≥75em |
|
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Max container width | None (auto) | 544px (33.75rem) | 720px (45rem) | 960px (60rem) | 1152px (72rem) |
Class prefix | .col- |
.col-sm- |
.col-md- |
.col-lg- |
.col-xl- |
# of columns | 12 | ||||
Gutter width | 2rem / 32px (16px on each side of a column) | ||||
Nestable | Yes | ||||
Offsets | Yes | ||||
Column ordering | Yes |
Auto-Layout Columns
Utilize breakpoint-specific column classes for easy column sizing without an explicit numbered class like .col-sm-6
.
Equal Width
Equal-width columns are easliy done by adding any number of .col-{breakpoint}
s for each breakpoint you need and every column will be the same width.
For example, here’s are some grid layouts that apply to every device and viewport possible, from xs
to xl
.
Controlling One Column Width
Auto-layout for flexbox grid columns also means you can set the width of one column and have the sibling columns automatically resize around it. You may use predefined grid classes (as shown below), grid mixins, or inline widths.
Note that the other columns will resize no matter the width of the center column.
Variable Width Content
Use col-{breakpoint}-auto
classes to size columns based on the natural width of their content. Use these classes in conjunction with horizontal alignment classes for centering layouts with uneven column sizes as viewport width changes.
Equal Width with Multiple Rows
Create equal-width columns that span multiple rows by inserting a .w-100
where you want the columns to break to a new line. Make the breaks responsive by mixing the .w-100
with some responsive display utilities.
Responsive Classes
Figuration’s grid includes five tiers of predefined classes for building complex responsive layouts. Customize the size of your columns on extra small, small, medium, large, or extra large devices however you see fit.
All Breakpoints
For grids that are the same from the smallest of devices to the largest, use the .col
and .col-*
classes. Specify a numbered class when you need a particularly sized column; otherwise, feel free to stick to .col
.
Stacked to Horizontal
Using a single set of .col-sm-*
classes, you can create a basic grid system that starts out stacked and becomes horizontal at the small breakpoint (sm
).
Mix and Match
Don’t want your columns to simply stack in some grid tiers. Use a combination of different classes for each tier as needed. See the example below for a better idea of how it all works.
Alignment
Use Flexbox alignment utilities to vertically and horizontally align columns.
Internet Explorer 10 and 11 do not support vertical alignment of flex items when the flex container has a min-height
. See Flexbugs #3 for more details.
Vertical Alignment
Horizontal Alignment
No Gutters
The gutters between columns in our default, predefined grid classes can be removed with .no-gutters
. This removes the negative margin
s from .row
and the horizontal padding
from all immediate children columns.
Here’s the source code for creating these styles. Note that column overrides are scoped to only the first children columns and are targeted via attribute selector. While this generates a more specific selector, column padding can still be further customized with spacing utilities.
Need an edge-to-edge design? Drop the parent .container
or .container-fluid
.
In practice, here’s how it looks. Note you can continue to use this with all other predefined grid classes (including column widths, responsive tiers, reorders, and more).
Custom Gutters
Gutters can be responsively adjusted by breakpoint-specific padding and negative margin utility classes. To change the gutters in a given row, pair a negative margin utility on the .row
and matching padding utilities on the .col
s.
Here is an example of customizing the grid at the large (lg
) breakpoint and above. The the .col
horizontal padding is increased with .px-lg-2
and then counteracted that with negative horizontal margin .mx-lg-n2
on the parent .row
.
In some cases, you may also have to adjust the padding on the parent container of the .row
element to prevent horizontal scrollbars from occuring. For example, using the custom negative margin example above, you may find the need to use .px-lg-2
on the parent .container-fluid
.
Column Wrapping
If more than 12 columns are placed within a single row, each group of extra columns will, as one unit, wrap onto a new line.
Since 9 + 4 = 13 > 12, this 4-column-wide div gets wrapped onto a new line as one contiguous unit.
Subsequent columns continue along the new line.
Column Resets
Resetting, or breaking, columns to a new line in flexbox requires a small hack: add an element with width: 100%
wherever you want to wrap your columns to a new line. This can also be accomplished with multiple .row
s. You may need to try both implementation methods to see which works best for your layout.
taller
You can also apply a break at specific breakpoints with our responsive display utilities.
taller
Reordering
Flex Order
Use flexbox order utilities for controlling the visual order of your content.
Order utilities are also available in column counts.
Offsetting Columns
You can offset grid columns in two ways: our responsive .offset-
grid classes and our margin utilities. Grid classes are sized to match columns while margins are more useful for quick layouts where the width of the offset is variable.
Offset Classes
Move columns to the right using .offset-*
classes. These classes increase the left margin of a column by *
columns. For example, .offset-md-4
moves a column over four columns on medium and larger devices.
In addition to column clearing at responsive breakpoints, you may need to reset offsets. See this in action in the grid example.
Margin Utilities
You can also use margin utilities like .ms-auto
, and .me-auto
, to force sibling columns away from one another.
Nesting
To nest your content with the default grid, add a new .row
and set of .col-sm-*
columns within an existing .col-sm-*
column. Nested rows should include a set of columns that add up to 12 or fewer (it is not required that you use all 12 available columns).
Customizing the Grid
Using our built-in grid Sass variables and maps, it’s possible to completely customize the predefined grid classes. Change the number of tiers, the media query dimensions, the container widths, and the grid gutter widths—then recompile.
Columns and Gutters
The number of grid columns and their horizontal padding (aka, gutters) can be modified via Sass variables. $grid-columns
is used to generate the widths (in percent) of each individual column while $grid-gutter-width
sets the width for the column gutters.
Grid Tiers
Moving beyond the columns themselves, you may also customize the number of grid tiers. If you wanted just four grid tiers, you would update the $grid-breakpoints
and $container-max-widths
to something like this:
Save your changes and recompile to have a brand new set of predefined grid classes for column widths and offsets. Responsive visibility utilities will also be updated to use the custom breakpoints.
Sass Variables and Mixins
When using Figuration’s source Sass files, you have the option of using Sass variables and mixins to create custom, semantic, and responsive page layouts. Our predefined grid classes use these same variables and mixins to provide a whole suite of ready-to-use classes for fast responsive layouts.
Variables
Variables and maps determine the number of columns, the gutter width, and the media query point at which to begin floating columns. We use these to generate the predefined grid classes documented above, as well as for the custom mixins listed below.
Some Sass functions are in use here. Simply put bp-to-em()
converts a pixel value to em assuming 16px root font size, while rem()
converts a pixel value to rem, but checks the defined $font-size-root
variable in the Sass and uses that for conversion.
Mixins
Mixins are used in conjunction with the grid variables to generate semantic CSS for individual grid columns.
Example Usage
You can modify the variables to your own custom values, or just use the mixins with their default values. Here’s an example of using the default settings to create a two-column layout with a gap between.