Set text on the web to a baseline grid with Sass & rems.
Layouts added with new mixins to create a main column with optimal measure and a sidebar that doesn’t get too narrow. Better baseline grid overlay.
There are many different options when it comes to boilerplates, frameworks and pattern libraries these days. Sassline has one aim and one aim only – to spread better typography across the responsive environment that is the web.
The idea is to have easy to use and maintain SCSS files utilising the power of Sass to make the complex calculations to set type on a baseline grid on the web, with a production ready CSS output. Using rems for the font-sizing and the spacing measurements gives a simple way to use the proportions of the baseline grid throughout the design. Sass mixins do all the heavy lifting so your job is easy.
OpenType features are enabled to give the nicest formatting of text and some flourishes in the headings if available in the web font and supported in the browser.
Sassline is based on setting the root font-size as half the line-height of the paragraph text. The height of the baseline grid is then effectively set at 2rem, with increments at each 1rem. This makes it nice and easy to work proportionally from the baseline with integer rem values.
Getting the most out of OpenType features can end up with large typeface files being served to your site as discussed on the Typekit blog. Included in Sassline is a method for using a smaller kit (without the full character sets) at smaller viewport sizes where OpenType support is low anyway to save downloading the extra characters.
Sassline is fully commented with details in the SCSS. Set the font sizes with the font-size mixin, set the spacing using the baseline mixin or set both at once with the sassline mixin. Use rems for everything else. Here are some other key points:
Using Sass 3.3.7+ and Sass-Globbing:
sass -r sass-globbing --watch assets/sass:assets/css
Alternatively a Mixture simple project settings file is included which will compile the Sass + minify for you (as well as much more). Sassline is also available as a mixture boilerplate here.
You can also used your preferred methods for compiling sass as long as you have Sass 3.3.7+ and Sass-Globbing enabled.
My preferred method is to work along the lines of the SMACSS & BEM method. In the sass folder there there are two folders — base and modules. The base folder has the Sassline base SCSS partials. The modules folder contains some demo SCSS partials with styles you can keep or remove. All new partials added to modules will be compiled into your css so work in here with new files.
Please see this blog post.
Viljami Salminen’s responsive-nav.js plugin is included to provide a mobile ready navigation to work from.
Browsers will be browsers. Sassline will set text to the baseline in recent versions of Chrome and Firefox, IE 11+ and Safari 8+. It will not work currently in Safari 7 or Safari on iOS 7 as they do not support subpixel padding.
- Full documentation
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Copyright (c) 2013-2014 Jake Giltsoff
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