seafarer / straight-up

A lightweight, fluid grid framework: Neat without Bourbon.

Straight Up

Neat without Bourbon, ready for Autoprefixer.

Straight Up is a fluid grid framework built on with the aim of being easy enough to use out of the box and flexible enough to customise down the road.

• Read the introductory blog post
• Check out a demo
• See the original documentation for Neat

Requirements

Straight Up’s only dependency is Sass 3.2+ or Libsass. Autoprefixer is not required but recommended.

Getting Started

Download Straight Up or install it with the package manager of your choice.

With npm

npm install --save-dev kennethormandy/straight-up

With Component

component install kennethormandy/straight-up

With Bower

bower install straight-up

Using Straight Up

First off, if you are planning to override the default grid settings (12 columns), it is recommended to create a _grid-settings.scss file for that purpose. Make sure to import it right before importing Straight Up:

@import "grid-settings";
@import "straight-up/straight-up";

In your newly created _grid-settings.scss, import straight-up-helpers if you are planning to use new-breakpoint(), then define your new variables:

@import "straight-up/straight-up-helpers";

// Change the grid settings
$column: 90px;
$gutter: 30px;
$grid-columns: 10;
$max-width: em(1088);

// Define your breakpoints
$tablet: new-breakpoint(max-width 768px 8);
$mobile: new-breakpoint(max-width 480px 4);

See the original docs for a full list of settings.

Next, include the outer-container mixin in the topmost container (to which the max-width setting will be applied):

div.container {
  @include outer-container;
}

Then use span-columns on any element to specify the number of columns it should span:

div.element {
  @include span-columns(6);
}

If the element’s parent isn’t the top-most container, you need to add the number of columns of the parent element to keep the right proportions:

div.container {
  @include outer-container;

  div.parent-element {
    @include span-columns(8);

    div.element {
      @include span-columns(6 of 8);
    }
  }
}

To make your layout responsive, use the media() mixin to modify both the grid and the layout:

.my-class {
  @include media($mobile) { // As defined in _grid-settings.scss
    @include span-columns(2);
  }
}

The compiled CSS will appear as follows:

@media screen and (max-width: 480px) {
  .my-class {
    display: block;
    float: left;
    margin-right: 7.42297%;
    width: 46.28851%; // 2 columns of the total 4 in this media context
  }
  .my-class:last-child {
    margin-right: 0;
  }
}

By setting $visual-grid to true, you can display the base grid in the background (default) or as an overlay. You can even change the color and opacity of the grid-lines by overriding the default settings as detailed in the section below.

The visual grid reflects the changes applied to the grid via the new-breakpoint() mixin, as long as the media contexts are defined before importing Straight Up.

FAQ

How do I use omega() in a mobile-first workflow?

Using omega() with an nth-child pseudo selector in a mobile-first workflow will cause the style to be applied to wider-viewport media queries as well. That is the cascading nature of CSS.

One solution would be to provide an omega-reset() mixin that negates the effect of omega() on that specific nth-child pseudo selector. While this is often the most suggested solution, it is also a lazy hack that outputs ugly code and can quickly get out of hand in complex layouts. As a general rule, having to undo CSS styles is a sign of poor stylesheet architecture (more about CSS code smells).

The other, more elegant, solution is to use mutually exclusive media queries, also referred to as media-query splitting. This would guarantee that omega() styles are only applied where desired.

$first-breakpoint-value: 400px;
$second-breakpoint-value: 700px;
$medium-viewport: new-breakpoint(min-width em($first-breakpoint-value) max-width em($second-breakpoint-value));
$large-viewport: new-breakpoint(min-width em($second-breakpoint-value + 1));

.element {
  @include media($medium-viewport) {
    @include span-columns(6);
    @include omega(2n);
  }

  @include media($large-viewport) {
    @include span-columns(4);
    @include omega(3n);
  }
}

If, for some reason, you still think that omega-reset is the only way you want to go, check out Josh Fry’s omega-reset.

Why are the elements not properly aligned with the visual grid?

The visual grid is built using CSS gradients whose stops might contain decimal values depending on the default settings of your grid. In order to render the gradient, browsers round the pixel values since they can’t deal with pixel fractions.

As a result the visual grid might be few pixels off in some browsers. The result is also inconsistent across browsers. For best results, preview your website on Firefox as it renders closest to the expected outcome.

At this point, writing an internal rounding mechanism is not high priority.

Framework X has this feature that Straight Up seems to be missing. Can you add it?

Unless you open a pull request, the answer is most likely going to be no. Straight Up is lightweight and simple compared to other grid frameworks, and strives to remain so. We have plans for adding new features in future versions of the framework, but these will be most likely to support new ways of working with layouts on the Web, not patches to existing ones.

Links

• Ask questions on Stack Overflow. Don’t forget to tag them neat and straight-up.
• Suggest features or file bugs in Issues.
• Join #bourbon-neat on irc.freenode.net.

Browser support

• Chrome 4.0+
• Firefox 3.5+
• Internet Explorer 9+ (visual grid is IE 10 only)
• Internet Explorer 8 with selectivizr (no media() support)
• Opera 9.5+
• Safari 4.0+

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright © 2012–2014 thoughtbot, inc
Copyright © 2014 Kenneth Ormandy

Straight Up is based upon Neat, which was maintained and funded by thoughtbot, inc.
Straight Up was forked and is maintained by Kenneth Ormandy at Chloi Inc..