I am only in the theorizing stages of this and would love some input. I am developing a site for a client in Drupal that will contain over 250 pages. I have broken the site down into 22 modules. I am about half-way through the project and am starting to realize an issue that will come up. The client will be able to go into the back end and determine the background color of each module (grey or white). I am seeing that I will run into an issue with the padding of each module. Every module should be separated by 40 pixels, so each module has a top and bottom padding of 20 pixels. This is based on the design of having one background color for each module. However if the modules contain different background colors, then there would need to be a total of 80 pixels separating them (per the approved design). This becomes even more complicated for table and mobile as things break out of their containers, but I'll go down that road when I solve the initial issue. Like I said, I'm just now starting to think about a solution and am hoping for some input to get my brain motion. Thanks in advance!
Think this is fairly straightforward. The backend needs to check the sequence and output a specific class regarding the spacing of each block taking into the consideration the block position..
From a CSS perspective, the spacing class will have to be independent from the color of the block class, since the spacing is related to the sequence of the blocks and not the color of each block itself.
Hope this helps!
Related
I've been experimenting with this for over a week and I'm about to give up, as I think this is not possible, but I wanted to reach out to this awesome community first.
What I'm trying to achieve is to, somehow, overcome the stacked z-index settings.
Let me show you an example so you maybe get the idea faster:
http://raulmellado.com/clientes/zindextest/
What I'd like is to have the green div (#shouldbeontop) on top of all elements (I am setting it to position:fixed).
In other responses in stackoverflow (yes I've read dozens of threads here), the answer is to change the html, move elements around, etc, but my problem is that I'm creating the #shouldbeontop and #scrollbar elements dynamically using js (my application is a bit more complex than this example, but I've tried to simplify to share my problem here).
I've created a js that can be embedded (ideally) on any webpage which will add the elements, so I can use js if needed, but I can just assume that the #shouldbeontop and #scrollbar elements will be there; the rest could be any html/css combination that's already there.
Usually, where there is no z-index in different divs, this works beautifully, but as soon as there is some stacking, it breaks :-(
If you would like to see a real life application of this, here you can find a quick & dirty demo: http://videngage.me/demo/demo1.html (here there is no z-index, so the video [#shouldbeontop in my simplified demo] is always shown on top (when you scroll down), but here http://www.members.skolahudbyonline.eu/rytmus-trening-majstra/ the video goes behind when you scroll down)
Is there an universal solution for this (using css and/or js), or should I just give up?
Thanks sooooooooo much for your help
I am building this form: http://codepen.io/anon/pen/gFoIG/
and so far I am satisfied. Unfortunately I have some issue that I seem not able to fix.
First of all, I want to enforce the label positions beside their respective inputs. Now the form breaks down easily (with the opera emulator for smartphone and tablet, the privacy label goes below the check, but I want that it stays beside it)
The other issue that I have is that I want it to fall back gracefully when there are small screens, like placing the second image below the first and placing the input controls one below the other and take the full screen width to be bigger and easier to interact with, but so far I only was able to break the layout with my tests.
This issue: the the form layout breaks, the internal control (input, button, etc) go outside the container div. How do I enforce the container to keep everything inside? I've experimented with blocks, floats and whatever, but if the layout breaks, the input boxes usually go outside the gray rectangle.
Last issue: If I insert this form inside an existing website (for example, a page in wordpress) the layout get completely destroyed because influences from the theme style. How do I enforce my style on my form, keeping it isolated from the other styles? I can think of the iframe as a solution, but it is the only one? It is a good practice?
Anyone can help me with that?
You might want to take a look here. Its a site I just set up to explain an approach to responsive using a jQuery plugin to manage redoing layout. I think it could work for your example quite easily. Also because it can target a container div at any depth in a web page, it could be helpful in the scenario where the layout you want to reflow is inside a 3rd party container (as long as you can run script on the page).
I am a self-taught web designer with a staggering 3 sites or so under my belt. I just finished the first page of a website for a client who is a friend and therefore a lot more patient than a "real" client would be.
I love the way the sites looks, it is fairly consistent in the spectrum of popular browsers, and overall I was quite proud of it until I realize a major problem that to be honest is about two steps away from making me drop my dream of becoming a web designer.
When using Chrome, Safari, or older versions of Explorer the website's layout falls apart if someone has their zoom set to anything other than 100%.
It is frustrating me to the point of near depression. I used a div to surround the whole body, and the pages layout, which in this case is a MENU is done almost entirely with ULs (unordered lists) positioned absolutely.
The site is made up in such a way that all the parts connect (almost like a puzzle) and if some parts are out of line, it is dreadfully obvious.
I heard the zooming rounds up figures and could call for a couple of low alpha pixels here and there, but in my case some block elements are literally 25-50 pixels out of place.
http://www.stevemarcella.com
No need to get your dreams crushed just yet :> There is always hope.
First thing you should do is check all of the errors, which according to validator are 536 errors on the homepage.
I suggest you run the validator and correct errors one by one. It could solve your problems. First error I noticed is that you have a div element outside of body. You should keep everything inside the body tags.
This is outside of body.
<div class="wrapAroundBody" id="IdWrappingWholeBody">
Hope it helps.
Are there any existing plugins/extensions/methods to maintain vertical rhythm for Twitter's Bootstrap project?
It is quite a laborious task to create good vertical rhythm templates, I would rather use a pre-baked solution. I am open to creative suggestions, I just want my pages nicely aligned in the end.
Edit: To clarify what I am after...
Vertical rhythm is a technique used to ensure that every element on a page lines up according to a horizontal grid. This is achieved by setting the height, padding and margin of every item to conform to a standard unit line size. If a line of text in a paragraph is 20px high (including margin and padding) then maybe a heading 4 will also be 20px high, and a heading 1 might be 40px high. This maintains the rhythm of the text across columns.
I want to use this technique in combination with bootstrap (from twitter), but it would be quite a lot of work to get everything looking nice. For example, all the buttons would need to conform to the same vertical height definition as paragraph text etc... There are other standard controls used in bootstrap which would also all need rules to define their height appropriately.
I could start with a generic solution for vertical rhythm, which would go a long way to achieving what I want, but I wanted to know if anyone else has started this, or has any idea of another way to achieve this.
Edit: Assuming there is nothing like what I want...
Maybe just a good vertical-rhythm based css template would be a good starting point. Preferably something that is continuing to be developed, is already usable, well thought out, and adaptable.
Since no one has linked to an actual vertical rhythm boilerplate as you suggested, I took the one I use, commented it, and created a github repo for it here https://github.com/jonschlinkert/vertical-rhythm
As it says in the readme, this is a starting point for your own project.
I think what you're going after is understood. Problem is: you're looking for a grid schema in one dimension (a "vertical rhythm" set in accordance with, for example, proportional line heights...which, in a manner of speaking, measures and aligns things along a given page's Y axis)...but doing things in that manner might potentially be at odds with Bootstrap's pre-existing 12-column grid system (which, in contrast, measures and aligns things along the page's X axis). You want to "proportionalize" the height of each "row" in the framework. BUT: keep in mind, Bootstrap's design is intended to promote not just proportionality via columns solely for the sake of looking nice, but to also make pages responsive--i.e., to allow page elements to "flow" around one another vertically, and to nest fluidly. And, in that sense, issues pertaining to the height of elements measured along the Y axis may already be accounted for... I recall that most of the typographic elements in the base CSS file have proportional em sizes, and/or likewise proportional top and bottom padding, etc. Generally speaking, things are not so arbitrary that the framework screams a need for additional styling in the manner you're considering.
Even so: Bootstrap's base CSS file isn't so intolerably extensive that it'd be impossible for you to tweak the height of various element classes and IDs yourself without too much trouble. In any case, it's highly unlikely you're really going to need to do that with every styled element, right? In fact, as a framework, Bootstrap includes styling for many elements which may not even be in the app for which you're designing the front end. (EXAMPLE: Does your app have drop down menus? Great. You can style the "vertical rhythm" of drop down menus. BUT: are you also using pills or tabs in your nav bar? No pills, you say? Well, you can just delete a couple hundred lines of code in the stylesheet and save yourself the effort of having to apply your "vertical rhythm" to those unneeded elements.) Elsewise, for the elements that remain and that you do in fact need, just use a text editor to find-replace the values for line height, top and bottom padding, margins, font-size, etc...and test it out. As a CSS framework, it's pretty clear how Bootstrap is laid out; relevant elements are well sorted, and grouped together within the stylesheet's code for the most part. Once you do complete tweaking of the base CSS file, just minify your revised stylesheet...to replace the pre-existing minified version...or, perhaps, just serve it up from CloudFront if you want to optimize.
The Compass CSS Authoring Framework has explicit support for vertical rhythm based typography. For starters you can check out this short video tutorial.
Have you looked at the Square Grid CSS framework?
http://thesquaregrid.com/
A simple CSS framework for designers and developers, based on 35
equal-width columns. It aims to cut down on development time and help
you create beautiful-structured websites.
Square Grid provides a standard horizontal grid, but it also maintains a vertical grid, using a standard "square" of 28px. It is really just a grid, not a full CSS library like Bootstrap (i.e. no buttons, menus, etc).
I used to for one project and found it to be pretty intuitive, though I ultimately decided that it was too hard for me to keep track of both the vertical and horizontal grid, especially when thinking about responsive design.
You may be able to combine the two, or at least take a look at the square grid source code which is pretty simple CSS to get some ideas on how to adapt Bootstrap to meet your needs.
I have recently begun using image sprites and they are definately great for reducing http requests. Is there a point where it becomes bad practice?
Im thinking particularly where a lot of extra markup has to be added to support them. For example, using them for list bullet points, I have to add two or three extra spans to get everything alligned etc.
Theres also the annoying point that you cant use repeating images, so therfore there is always the toss up between one large image as part of sprite or a tiny 1 pixel image used for repeating downloaded on its own.
Im really looking for an opinion on the two situations outlined here + any other general considerations/guidelines for using sprites.
They can often cause performance issues on mobile devices. I'm not 100% certain why (never really dived into the problem), but I'm assuming it's because the mobile webkit is loading a new copy of a relatively large image into memory for every instance of it on the page. Since mobile devices often have very small amounts of RAM, it can quickly cause the page to slow down.
I've run into this issue before when having about 300 "icon" sprites on a page at one time, each pulling from a sprite image that contained about 50 different icons. Going back to "normal" methods of one icon per image (or 2-3 for hover states) solved performance issues on this particular page.
Also, many browsers (mobile and otherwise) will often not 100% respect the clipping of sprites when you slightly resize the page content (e.g. using "Zoom In/Out" on the browser itself). You'll often see little pieces of the sprite next to the one you want to use.
As for your bullet example, you shouldn't ever need more than one extra div/span. You would set a margin-left on the li and position your "bullet div" in the empty space it creates.
That being said, I use sprites all the time because they're convenient, just be aware of a few issues with them. Generally, I have sprites.png, sprites_h.png and sprites_v.png for horizontally and vertically repeating pieces.
Write two simple test pages, use sprites on one, and not on the other. Use a tool like http://www.webpagetest.org/ to measure the performance in a few different browsers. Once you have data, you can make decisions.
I would divide sprites by related elements, like navigation and content-related sprites, so you can benefit from sprites and keep a logical order in your code. Don't forget that readable and understandable code should be a priority (particularly with CSS, it can get very messy) unless you're working on a Google-scale project.