Making Modular Layout Systems. For all of the advantages the web has with distribution of content, I’ve always lamented the handiness of the WYSIWYG design tools from the print publishing world. When I set out to redesign my personal website, I wanted to have some of the same abilities that those tools have, laying out pages how I saw fit, and that meant a flexible system for dealing with imagery. Building on some of the CSS that Eric Meyer employed a few years back on the A List Apart design, I created a set of classes to use together to achieve the variety I was after. Employing multiple classes isn’t a new technique, but most examples aren’t coming at this from strictly editorial and visual perspectives; I wanted to have options to vary my layouts depending on content.
If you want to skip ahead, you can view the example first. Laying the Foundation We need to be able to map out our page so that we have predictable canvas, and then create a system of image sizes that work with it. Identifier Size Placement Additions. jQuery Masonry · David DeSandro. Griddy: Simple Grid Overlay Plugin for JQuery. Often when I’m designing layouts, I know I want to create x number of columns that are spaced y pixels apart. Usually I do the math in my head or if I’m feeling super lazy, I pull out my calculator. While playing with grid overlays earlier today, I decided to make a plugin that automatically calculates column width and row height based on the number of rows or columns present and overlays an appropriately sized grid.
Griddy is a small JQuery plugin thats creates a simple, customizable grid overlay on top of any element. It can also calculate row heights and column widths automatically based on the number of rows/columns and gutter space. Initially the plugin was pretty limited and did only what I needed to, however after deciding to make it public I added a few options, including: You can see the default values in the plugin code itself (all sizes in pixels). All of the styling is done inline (yuck!) The Code Final Thoughts. The Grid System. Css columns with borders - onderhond blog. There are things css guys don't like. Equal height columns and rounded corners are two industry favorites.
Especially when the design combines rounded corners together with borders. But bordered columns ... that one was fairly new to me. And guess what, they are pretty much the worst of all. What are we trying to do? Take a good look at the picture above. As for the css column layout technique, I won't explain it in full detail here as the SocialGeek blog already did a way better job than I could manage in the confines of this article.
What is holding us back? Most column techniques are based on images to fake the column effect in (more than) one wrapper. Using real borders would be nice indeed, but we can't since the columns are actually fake and never stretch the entire height. Opening the css trick box <div class="grid"><div class="wrap1"><div class="col1">... To create a layout like in the image we will use the html described above. Give me the css conclusion. Ratios and complex grid systems. – July 16th, 2005 – In part one of this Simple Steps series I talked about how to use a simple ratio, that of the paper size you are using, to create a symmetrical grid on which to create your designs.
This, the second part in the series, will deal with other ratios and how they can be combined to create more complex grid systems. I’ve talked a few times about using the Golden, or ‘Divine’, Section in the grid systems you design. So, before you continue I suggest you read the background in this article and my article in Design in Flight. For those who don’t want fork out your hard earned cash on the DiF article, I’ll summarise: The Golden Section is a ratio which is evident throughout the universe as the number Phi. You can use this ratio to good effect in design by making sure that elements of your grid conform to this ratio. This is an important point and has been argued and debated for ages. Composition can make things more usable Putting it into practice Shaping the page The series. Five simple steps to designing grid systems - Part 4 : Journal : Mark Boulton | Information design. – August 30th, 2005 – Layout seems to be a hot topic at the moment, mostly prompted by the ALA redesign and the numerous discussions of the choice by Jason and the ALA team to go 1024 for a fixed width.
I’m not going to go into my thoughts on ALA in too much depth here, there’s been a lot of that already, but it seems like the right time to get this article out. So, fixed width grid design for the web. What is it, how do we do it and how do we implement it? For the purposes of this article, I’m going to be focussing on the theory of creating the grid rather than the implementation.
I did mention in the last series that I would cover implementation using CSS, well I’m not going to. There are just so many resources and books available telling you how to create the CSS layouts you need—I’ll touch on it, but I won’t be going into too much detail. The Measurements A fixed grid for designing for the web is as close a translation from traditional grid design as there is.
The Canvas Timely?