Table Grid
Every grid to date uses float
s or some inline-block
hackery. That's so 2013 though, and seeing that it's now 2014, we need something newer, faster, and stronger. So, Table Grid was born.
Check out the example on GitHub Pages at http://mdo.github.io/table-grid/. Clone this or download it to give it a whirl for yourself.
Wtf
This isn't a serious project really, it's just an experiment. I'm curious about the rendering performance of using display: table;
as opposed to float
s, flex-box
, or display: inline-block;
. Each option has pros or cons, but in particular I'm focused on the con part:
float
s require clearing and I have zero idea about rendering performance. They're straightfoward and Just Work™.flex-box
has poor rendering last I heard because browsers have to do a lot of repainting to support it. I have no references to this, it's what I've heard. Plus, browser support and what not.display: inline-block;
is gnarly because it involves resettingwhite-space
and that's just silly. We shouldn't be resetting that kind of stuff just for a grid system.
So, based on that, display: table;
starts to sound kind of interesting. Table layouts, especially ones that include table-layout: fixed;
render super fast because browsers only need to render the first row of cells to paint the whole table. That's kind of moot with one row grids like this, but it might help anyway.
How it works
As always, there's a container, row, and a series of columns. It's responsive, too. More specifically:
- Center the site contents with
.container
, which has amax-width: 940px;
. - Wrap a row of columns with
.grid
. This sets up the table-based grid withdisplay: table;
,width: 100%;
, andtable-layout: fixed;
. - Columns get the
.col
base class and an optional width class, like.col-1
or.col-6
. There are 12 available column classes, 1-12, for any variety of column combinations. - Grid width class is not required. Without them, all columns become equal width via
.col
alone. Tables, baby! - Grids are nestable—just place a new
.grid
within any.col
. Bam. - By default, because of how
display: table;
works, there's no gutters. To add gutters, wrap the.grid
in.grid-padded
, which adds gutters withborder-spacing: 1rem 0;
. Sucks, but this is experimental.
All this can be seen in action on the demo page.
What's included
Table Grid has been rebuilt to use Sass (thanks, Jekyll!). Key CSS bits are broken down in _sass
:
grid-basics.scss
contains the container and basic responsive, equal-width column support.grid-columns.scss
contains specific column width classes for more granular control (e.g,.col-6
is 50% wide).grid-extras.scss
is for alignment and sorting options.
See http://mdo.github.io/table-grid/ for details on usage.
Fuck you, where's the real grid?
If you need a nuclear hardened grid system, check out Bootstrap. It's okay.
License
MIT, (c) Mark Otto 2014.