(Less version of Jake's Sassline framework. All documentation below is from the Sass version.)
Set text on the web to a baseline grid easily with rems and Sass. Sassline can be used for prototyping, blogs or other web projects. It has recommended base typography styling and mixins to work proportionally from the baseline grid. As little bloat as possible, simples.
Please note that in the latest version of Sassline, pixel fallbacks for the rems are not included. The reason I made this in the first place was to have an easy place to start projects, and the mixins were proving overly complicated for what I wanted to achieve. A version of Sassline with pixel fallbacks is available in the Fallback branch. See the browser support for rems here, spoiler alert – it’s actually pretty high.
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 speed up the, sometimes, complex calculations to set type on a baseline grid 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 and pixel fallbacks are included for full browser support – see here for more info.
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).
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) on mobile devices. Credit to Rob Sterlini for helping to condense my JavaScript for this.
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. The typographic styling included sets all elements to the baseline and is context aware, i.e. if there is a h2 followed by a h3 suitable spacing is applied. The spacing is set between elements with the Gestalt law of proximity (elements closer together are visually grouped).
I recently wrote a dissertation on responsive typography, looking at which historical typographic conventions are best suited to text in a responsive environment. Sassline takes some of my thoughts from this and puts them into action. You can also read some more about how it came about here.
Sassline is fully commented with details in the SCSS and aims to be as simple as possible to use. Set the font sizes with the font-size mixin and use rems for everything else.
Viljami Salminen’s responsive-nav.js plugin is included to provide a mobile ready navigation to work from.
A demo of Sassline in action can be viewed with web fonts here, and local fonts here.
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The MIT License (MIT)
Copyright (c) 2013 Jake Giltsoff, Kenneth Dahlstrøm
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