Grid system
Use our powerful mobile-first flexbox grid to build layouts of all shapes and sizes thanks to a twelve column system, five default responsive tiers, Sass variables and mixins, and dozens of predefined classes.
How it works
Boosted’s grid system uses a series of containers, rows, and columns to layout and align content. It’s built with flexbox and is fully responsive. Below is an example and an in-depth look at how the grid comes together.
New to or unfamiliar with flexbox? Read this CSS Tricks flexbox guide for background, terminology, guidelines, and code snippets.
The above 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
.
Breaking it down, here’s how it works:
- Containers provide a means to center and horizontally pad your site’s contents. Use
.container
for a responsive pixel 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. - 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 can 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, however, you can remove themargin
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.
Be aware of the limitations and bugs around flexbox, like the inability to use some HTML elements as flex containers.
Grid options
While Boosted uses em
s or rem
s for defining most sizes, px
s are used for grid breakpoints and container widths. This is because the viewport width is in pixels and does not change with the font size.
See how aspects of the Boosted grid system work across multiple devices with a handy table.
We have include a security margin for container fluid. The goal is to fit exactly the desired content width at the targetted resolution.
Extra small <480px |
Small ≥480px |
Medium ≥768px |
Large ≥980px |
Extra large ≥1220px |
Extra extra large ≥1380px |
|
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Targetted resolution | 320px | 480px | 768px | 1024px | 1280px | 1440px |
Device | Mobile portrait | Mobile landscape | Tablet portrait | Small desktop / Tablet landscape | Medium desktop | Large desktop |
Container max-width (Design Area) | 302px | 458px | 724px | 940px | 1180px | 1300px |
Container-fluid margin | 1.25% | 1.25% | 1.5625% | 3.125% | 3.125% | 4.16667% |
Column width | 16px | 29px | 42px | 60px | 80px | 90px |
Gutter width | 10px (5px on each side of a column) | 20px (10px on each side of a column) | ||||
# of columns | 12 | |||||
Class prefix | .col- |
.col-sm- |
.col-md- |
.col-lg- |
.col-xl- |
.col-xxl- |
# of columns | 12 | |||||
Gutter width | 30px (15px on each side of a column) | |||||
Nestable | 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
For example, here are two grid layouts that apply to every device and viewport, from xs
to xl
. Add any number of unit-less classes for each breakpoint you need and every column will be the same width.
Equal-width columns can be broken into multiple lines, but there was a Safari flexbox bug that prevented this from working without an explicit flex-basis
or border
. There are workarounds for older browser versions, but they shouldn’t be necessary if you’re up-to-date.
Setting 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.
Equal-width multi-row
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
Boosted’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.
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. The .container
or .container-fluid
parent may need to be adjusted too to avoid unwanted overflow, using again matching padding utility.
Here’s an example of customizing the Bootstrap grid at the large (lg
) breakpoint and above. We’ve increased the .col
padding with .px-lg-5
, counteracted that with .mx-lg-n5
on the parent .row
and then adjusted the .container
wrapper with .px-lg-5
.
Alignment
Use flexbox alignment utilities to vertically and horizontally align columns. Internet Explorer 10-11 do not support vertical alignment of flex items when the flex container has a min-height
as shown below. See Flexbugs #3 for more details.
Vertical alignment
Horizontal alignment
No gutters
The gutters between columns in our 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).
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 breaks
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. Normally this is accomplished with multiple .row
s, but not every implementation method can account for this.
You may also apply this break at specific breakpoints with our responsive display utilities.
Reordering
Order classes
Use .order-
classes for controlling the visual order of your content. These classes are responsive, so you can set the order
by breakpoint (e.g., .order-1.order-md-2
). Includes support for 1
through 12
across all five grid tiers.
There are also responsive .order-first
and .order-last
classes that change the order
of an element by applying order: -1
and order: 13
(order: $columns + 1
), respectively. These classes can also be intermixed with the numbered .order-*
classes as needed.
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-md-*
classes. These classes increase the left margin of a column by *
columns. For example, .offset-md-4
moves .col-md-4
over four columns.
In addition to column clearing at responsive breakpoints, you may need to reset offsets. See this in action in the grid example.
Margin utilities
With the move to flexbox in v4, you can use margin utilities like .mr-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).
Sass mixins
When using Boosted’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.
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.
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, and the container widths—then recompile.
Columns and gutters
The number of grid columns can be modified via Sass variables. $grid-columns
is used to generate the widths (in percent) of each individual column while $grid-gutter-widths
allows breakpoint-specific widths that are divided evenly across padding-left
and padding-right
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’d update the $grid-breakpoints
and $container-max-widths
to something like this:
When making any changes to the Sass variables or maps, you’ll need to save your changes and recompile. Doing so will output a brand new set of predefined grid classes for column widths, offsets, and ordering. Responsive visibility utilities will also be updated to use the custom breakpoints. Make sure to set grid values in px
(not rem
, em
, or %
).