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Blueprint: Taking a Close Look at grid.css

admin — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:31:23 +0000

About Blueprint

Blueprint is a CSS framework, which aims to cut down on your development time. It gives you a solid foundation to build your project on top of, with an easy-to-use grid, sensible typography, useful plugins, and even a stylesheet for printing.

.container

/* A container should group all your columns. */
.container {
width: 950px;
margin: 0 auto;
}

container is where it all begins. This establishes your centered div with a width of 950 pixels. If you've done much CSS, this should look pretty familiar:

margin: 0 auto; /* This is what centers the div */

Not much else to say except all of your other columns should be inside a div with the container class. Let's move on.

.showgrid

.showgrid { background: url(src/grid.png);  }

showgrid is a nice tool to display your columns when you're laying out a page. Simply add it to the container div like so:

DIV contents

Once you're satisfied with how things are positioned, remove showgrid from your classes.

Let's skip down to line 33 or so.

.span-x

/* Sets up basic grid floating and margin. */
div.span-1, div.span-2, div.span-3, div.span-4, div.span-5,
div.span-6, div.span-7, div.span-8, div.span-9, div.span-10,
div.span-11, div.span-12, div.span-13, div.span-14, div.span-15,
div.span-16, div.span-17, div.span-18, div.span-19, div.span-20,
div.span-21, div.span-22, div.span-23, div.span-24 {
  float: left;
  margin-right: 10px;
}

This just sets up your span-x columns to all float left. It's a bit counter-intuitive, but this makes them all wrap around to the right of each other. It also sets up the 10 pixel margin to the right of each one for a nice gutter. That is, except for last. last is always the last column and forces any div with a span-x class to go below it. It also has no right margin:

div.last { margin-right: 0; }

Next the span-x widths are set:

/* Use these classes to set the width of a column. */
.span-1  { width: 30px; }
.span-2  { width: 70px; }
.span-3  { width: 110px; }
.span-4  { width: 150px; }
.span-5  { width: 190px; }
.span-6  { width: 230px; }
.span-7  { width: 270px; }
.span-8  { width: 310px; }
.span-9  { width: 350px; }
.span-10 { width: 390px; }
.span-11 { width: 430px; }
.span-12 { width: 470px; }
.span-13 { width: 510px; }
.span-14 { width: 550px; }
.span-15 { width: 590px; }
.span-16 { width: 630px; }
.span-17 { width: 670px; }
.span-18 { width: 710px; }
.span-19 { width: 750px; }
.span-20 { width: 790px; }
.span-21 { width: 830px; }
.span-22 { width: 870px; }
.span-23 { width: 910px; }
.span-24, div.span-24 { width: 950px; margin: 0; }

Notice above that span-24 takes up the full width with no right margin. Want a wider gutter than the pre-established 10 pixels? No problem.

.append-x

/* Add these to a column to append empty cols. */
.append-1  { padding-right: 40px; }
.append-2  { padding-right: 80px; }
.append-3  { padding-right: 120px; }
.append-4  { padding-right: 160px; }
.append-5  { padding-right: 200px; }
.append-6  { padding-right: 240px; }
.append-7  { padding-right: 280px; }
.append-8  { padding-right: 320px; }
.append-9  { padding-right: 360px; }
.append-10 { padding-right: 400px; }
.append-11 { padding-right: 440px; }
.append-12 { padding-right: 480px; }
.append-13 { padding-right: 520px; }
.append-14 { padding-right: 560px; }
.append-15 { padding-right: 600px; }
.append-16 { padding-right: 640px; }
.append-17 { padding-right: 680px; }
.append-18 { padding-right: 720px; }
.append-19 { padding-right: 760px; }
.append-20 { padding-right: 800px; }
.append-21 { padding-right: 840px; }
.append-22 { padding-right: 880px; }
.append-23 { padding-right: 920px; }

Remember, each of the span-x columns are 30 pixels wide with a 10-pixel right margin. Likewise the above append-x classes will add an additional column to the right. Just do the math. span-1 adds 40 pixels. span-2, 80 pixels and so on. We can add columns to the left with the prepend classes in the same way.

.prepend-x

/* Add these to a column to prepend empty cols. */
.prepend-1  { padding-left: 40px; }
.prepend-2  { padding-left: 80px; }
.prepend-3  { padding-left: 120px; }
.prepend-4  { padding-left: 160px; }
.prepend-5  { padding-left: 200px; }
.prepend-6  { padding-left: 240px; }
.prepend-7  { padding-left: 280px; }
.prepend-8  { padding-left: 320px; }
.prepend-9  { padding-left: 360px; }
.prepend-10 { padding-left: 400px; }
.prepend-11 { padding-left: 440px; }
.prepend-12 { padding-left: 480px; }
.prepend-13 { padding-left: 520px; }
.prepend-14 { padding-left: 560px; }
.prepend-15 { padding-left: 600px; }
.prepend-16 { padding-left: 640px; }
.prepend-17 { padding-left: 680px; }
.prepend-18 { padding-left: 720px; }
.prepend-19 { padding-left: 760px; }
.prepend-20 { padding-left: 800px; }
.prepend-21 { padding-left: 840px; }
.prepend-22 { padding-left: 880px; }
.prepend-23 { padding-left: 920px; }

prepend-1 adds 40 pixels to the left of a column. prepend-2 adds 80 pixels and so on. As long as we're talking about positioning, let's skip ahead a little bit.

.push-x & .pull-x

/* Use these classes on an element to push it into the
   next column, or to pull it into the previous column.  */

.pull-1 { margin-left: -40px; }
.pull-2 { margin-left: -80px; }
.pull-3 { margin-left: -120px; }
.pull-4 { margin-left: -160px; }
.pull-5 { margin-left: -200px; }

.pull-1, .pull-2, .pull-3,
.pull-4, .pull-5, .pull-5 {
  float:left;
	position:relative;
}

.push-1 { margin: 0 -40px 1.5em 40px; }
.push-2 { margin: 0 -80px 1.5em 80px; }
.push-3 { margin: 0 -120px 1.5em 120px; }
.push-4 { margin: 0 -160px 1.5em 160px; }
.push-5 { margin: 0 -200px 1.5em 200px; }

.push-0, .push-1, .push-2,
.push-3, .push-4, .push-5 {
  float: right;
	position:relative;
}

pull-x and push-x function in a similar way to append-x and prepend-x, except they'll actually push columns into one another instead of creating a wider gutter. push-1 pushes the page element over to the right by one, 40-pixel column. pull-1 pulls the page element over to the left by one 40-pixel column.

We skipped over some stuff. Let's go back to it:

.border

/* Border on right hand side of a column. */
div.border {
  padding-right: 4px;
  margin-right: 5px;
  border-right: 1px solid #eee;
}

border adds a right-border to any page element. Notice the right padding, margin and 1-pixel border all add up to 10 pixels to maintain the standard 10-pixel gutter.

.colborder

colborder does the same except the right margin spans an entire column:

/* Border with more whitespace, spans one column. */
div.colborder {
  padding-right: 24px;
  margin-right: 25px;
  border-right: 1px solid #eee;
}

The right padding, margin and 1-pixel border add up to 50 pixels this time.

.box

box creates a padded box inside a column.

.box {
  padding: 1.5em;
  margin-bottom: 1.5em;
  background: #E5ECF9;
}

hr

hr gets a nice default setting to make sure it crosses your column:

hr {
  background: #ddd;
  color: #ddd;
  clear: both;
  float: none;
  width: 100%;
  height: .1em;
  margin: 0 0 1.45em;
  border: none;
}
hr.space {
  background: #fff;
  color: #fff;
}

I'm actually going to skip to the end because the clearfix classes seem a bit outmoded after reading the article they are based on. Read this article instead.

.clear

clear simply forces a column to go beneath the column before it.

.clear { clear:both; }

That's it. Hopefully reading this will give you a good sense of what positioning classes are available in Blueprint and how to use them. Please leave a comment if anything needs clarification.Similar Posts:

Incorporating Blueprint CSS Into Your New WordPress Theme

admin — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 15:07:09 +0000

If you’re familiar with the Blueprint CSS framework, you already know it can make your life a lot easier. So how do you get it into your WordPress theme? Luckily, WordPress is designed to make your life easier too.

I’m assuming your know the basics of WordPress Theme Development. That is, at the very least you need:

header.php
footer.php
index.php
style.css

Put those files in a folder named after your theme. And put that folder in /wordpressroot/wp-content/themes/.

Once you’ve gotten that far, download the Blueprint CSS Framework and drop the “blueprint” folder from that download into your theme’s directory.

Finally, to include the new CSS files into your theme, just add this code to your header:

Pay attention to the order. You want to make sure that href="" appears last in the list of style sheets. That’s your style.css where you can tailor the CSS for your specific design.

That’s it.Similar Posts:

Blueprint CSS Tutorial File

admin — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 21:25:46 +0000

Just like the README file for Blueprint CSS, I wanted to refer to the TUTORIAL file in a more readable format. Here it is formatted for easy reading.

Blueprint CSS Framework Tutorial

Welcome to this tutorial on Blueprint. It will give you a thorough intro to what you can do with the framework, and a few notes on what you shouldn’t do with it. Let’s get started.

About Blueprint

Blueprint is a CSS framework, designed to cut down on your development time. It gives you a solid foundation to build your CSS on top of, including some sensible default typography, a customizable grid, a print stylesheet and much more.

However, BP is not a silver bullet, and it’s best suited for websites where each page may require it’s own design. Take a look at existing BP pages before deciding if the framework is right for you. You may also check out the test files in the tests directory, which demonstrates most of the features in Blueprint.

The word “framework” may be a bit misleading in this context, since BP does not make suggestions on how you should organize or write your CSS. It’s more like a “css toolbox” with helpful bits and pieces, from which you may pick and choose based on your needs.

Structural Overview

From the bottom up, here are the CSS layers in Blueprint:

CSS reset: Removes any default CSS rules set by each browser.
Typography: Gives you some nice default typography and colors.
Grid: Provides a set of CSS classes for making grid layouts.

The second part of Blueprint are the scripts, which lets you customize most aspects of the framework, from column count and widths, to output paths and CSS class namespaces. We have two scripts:

Compressor: For compressing and customizing the source files.
Validator: For validating the Blueprint core files.

That’s the quick overview, so now we can finally get into the details. First, we’ll take a look at the CSS in Blueprint. We’ll then move on to the scripts, where I’ll show you how to customize the framework.

Setting Up Blueprint

To use Blueprint, you must include three files in your HTML:

blueprint/screen.css: All CSS for screen, projection viewing.
blueprint/print.css: A basic stylesheet for printing.
blueprint/ie.css: A few needed corrections for Internet Explorer

To include them, use the following HTML (make sure the href paths are correct):

Remember to add trailing slashes if you’re using XHTML (” />”).

Using the CSS in Blueprint

As mentioned before, there’s basically three layers of CSS in Blueprint. The first two layers, the browser CSS reset and the default typography, apply themselves by changing CSS of standard HTML elements.
In other words, you don’t need to change anything in these files. If you for instance want to change the font size, do this in your own stylesheet, so that it’s easy to upgrade Blueprint when new versions arrive.

Classes for Typography

While the typography of Blueprint mainly applies itself, there’s a few classes provided. Here’s a list of their names and what they do:

.small: Makes the text of this element smaller.
.large: Makes the text of this element larger.
.hide: Hides an element.
.quiet: Tones down the font color for this element.
.loud: Makes this elements text black.
.highlight: Adds a yellow background to the text.
.added: Adds green background to the text.
.removed: Adds red background to the text.
.first: Removes any left sided margin/padding from the element.
.last: Removes any right sided margin/padding from the element.
.top: Removes any top margin/padding from the element.
.bottom: Removes any bottom margin/padding from the element.

Styling Forms

To make Blueprint style your input elements, each text input element should have the class .text, or .title, where .text is the normal size, and .title gives you an input field with larger text.

There’s also a few classes you may use for success and error messages:

div.error: Creates an error box (red).
div.notice: Creates a box for notices (yellow).
div.success: Creates a box for success messages (green).

Creating a Grid

The third layer is the grid CSS classes, which is the tool Blueprint gives you to create almost any kind of grid layout for your site. Keep in mind that most of the CSS behind the grid can be customized (explained below). In this section however, I’m using the default settings.

The default grid is made up of 24 columns, each spanning 30px, with a 10px margin between each column. The total width comes to 950px, which is a good width for 1024×768 resolution displays. If you’re interested in a narrower design, see the section on customizing the grid, below.

So how do you set up a grid? By using classes provided by Blueprint. To create a column, make a new

, and apply one of the .span-x classes to it. For instance, if you want a 3-column setup, with two narrow and one wide column, a header and a footer here’s how you do it:





The header



The first column





The center column





The last column



The footer

In addition to the spans, there are two important classes you need to know about. First of all, every Blueprint site needs to be wrapped in a div with the class .container, which is usually placed right after the body tag.

Second, the last column in a row (which by default has 24 columns), needs the class .last to remove its left hand margin. Note, however, that each .span-24 don’t need the .last class, since these always span the entire width of the page.

To create basic grids, this is all you need to know. The grid CSS however, provides many more classes
for more intricate designs. To see some of them in action, check out the files in tests/parts/. These files demonstrate what’s possible with the grid in Blueprint.

Here’s a quick overview of the other classes you can use in to make your grid:

.append-x: Appends x number of empty columns after a column.
.prepend-x: Preppends x number of empty columns before a column.
.push-x: Pushes a column x columns to the left. Can be used to swap columns.
.pull-x: Pulls a column x columns to the right. Can be used to swap columns.
.border: Applies a border to the right side of the column.
.colborder: Appends one empty column, with a border down the middle.
.clear: Makes a column drop below a row, regardless of space.
.showgrid: Add to container or column to see the grid and baseline.

In this list, x is a number from 1 through 23 for append/prepend and 1 through 24 for push/pull. These numbers will of course change if you set a new number of columns in the settings file.

Here’s another example where we have four columns of equal width, with a border between the two first and the two last columns, as well as a four column gap in the middle:





The first column





The second column





The third column





The fourth (last) column

You may also nest columns to achieve the desired layout. Here’s a setup where we want four rectangles with two on top and two below on the first half of the page, and one single column spanning the second half of the page:







Top left





Top right





Bottom left





Bottom right







Second half of page

Try this code in your browser it it’s difficult to understand what it would look like. To see more examples on how to use these classes, check out /tests/parts/grid.html.

The Scripts

Blueprint comes with two scripts: one for compressing and customizing the CSS, and one for validating the core CSS files, which is handy if you’re making changes to these files.

The Validator

The validator has a fairly simple job – validate the CSS in the core BP files. The script uses a bundled version of the W3C CSS validator to accomplish this. To run it, you’ll need to have Ruby installed on your machine. You can then run the script like so: $ ruby validate.rb.

Note that there are a few validation errors shipping with Blueprint. These are known, and comes from a few CSS hacks needed to ensure consistent rendering across the vast browser field.

The Compressor

As the files you’ll include in your HTML are the compressed versions of the core CSS files, you’ll have to recompress the core if you’ve made any changes. This is what the compressor script is for.

In addition this is where you customize the grid. To customize the grid, a special settings file is used, and the new CSS is generated once you run the compressor. The new compressed files will then reflect your settings file.

To recompress, you just have to run the script. This will parse the core CSS files and output new compressed files in the blueprint folder. As with the validator, Ruby has to be installed to use this script. In the lib directory, run: $ruby compress.rb

Calling this file by itself will pull files from blueprint/src and concatenate them into three files; ie.css, print.css, and screen.css. However, argument variables can be set to change how this works. Calling $ruby compress.rb -h will reveal basic arguments you can pass to the script.

Custom Settings

To learn how to use custom settings, read through the documentation within lib/compress.rbSimilar Posts:

Blueprint CSS Readme File

admin — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 20:45:10 +0000

Author’s note: This is word for word post of the Blueprint CSS file only because I’m tired of pulling up the text file and I’d rather read it in a nicely formatted HTML page. I’m sure others would prefer that too.

Blueprint CSS Framework Readme

Welcome to Blueprint! This is a CSS framework designed to cut down on your CSS development time.
It gives you a solid foundation to build your own CSS on. Here are some of the features BP provides out-of-the-box:

An easily customizable grid
Sensible default typography
A typographic baseline
Perfected browser CSS reset
A stylesheet for printing
Powerful scripts for customization
Absolutely no bloat!

Project Info

Setup Instructions

Here’s how you set up Blueprint on your site.

Upload the “blueprint” folder in this folder to your server, and place it in whatever folder you’d like. A good choice would be your CSS folder.
Add the following three lines to every of your site. Make sure the three href paths are correct (here, BP is in my CSS folder):

Remember to include trailing slashes (” />”) in these lines if you’re using XHTML.
For development, add the .showgrid class to any container or column to see the underlying grid.
Check out the plugins directory for more advanced functionality.

Tutorials

Files in Blueprint

The framework has a few files you should check out. Every file in the src directory contains lots of (hopefully) clarifying comments.

Compressed files (these go in the HTML):

blueprint/screen.css
blueprint/print.css
blueprint/ie.css

Source files:

blueprint/src/reset.css
This file resets CSS values that browsers tend to set for you.
blueprint/src/grid.css
This file sets up the grid (it’s true). It has a lot of classes you apply to
elements to set up any sort of column-based grid.
blueprint/src/typography.css
This file sets some default typography. It also has a few methods for some really fancy stuff to do with your text.
blueprint/src/forms.css
Includes some minimal styling of forms.
blueprint/src/print.css
This file sets some default print rules, so that printed versions of your site looks better than they usually would. It should be included on every page.
blueprint/src/ie.css
Includes every hack for our beloved IE6 and 7.

Scripts:

lib/compress.rb
A Ruby script for compressing and customizing your CSS. Set a custom namespace, column count, widths, output paths, multiple projects, and semantic class names. See commenting in compress.rb or run $ruby compress.rb -h for more information.
lib/validate.rb
Validates the Blueprint core files with the W3C CSS validator.

Other:

blueprint/plugins/
Contains additional functionality in the form of simple plugins for Blueprint. See individual readme files in the directory of each plugin for further instructions.
tests/
Contains html files which tests most aspects of Blueprint. Open tests/index.html for further instructions.

Extra Information

For credits and origins, see AUTHORS.
For license instructions, see LICENSE.
For the latest updates, see CHANGELOG.

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