There are plenty of grid systems available to us today. Designers and front-end developers can experiment with them and choose the ones that best fit their needs. CSS frameworks and boilerplates such as Bootstrap, Foundation, and Skeleton offer grids used by thousands of people.
In this article, I’d like to introduce you to Jeet, an alternative grid system built on CSS preprocessors. Firstly, I’ll cover the basics of it, presenting its core mixins. Then, I’ll show you how to build a project by taking advantage of its features.
What is Jeet
Jeet is a grid system built on top of Sass and Stylus. It consists of powerful mixins and functions you can use to create fast responsive layouts.
Unlike many other grids, Jeet provides a more flexible approach for producing layouts. Here are its main advantages:
It doesn’t add any additional markup.
It isn’t limited to a specific column size (e.g. 12-column grid).
You can use fractions (e.g. 1/4), decimals (e.g. 0.75), or even a combination of them (e.g. 1.5/4) for generating the desired layout.
The grid is designed to and works in all major browsers including IE9+. If you want to target previous versions of IE, take a look at the Boy boilerplate.
Getting Started
The grid comes in two flavors, one for Sass(SCSS) and another for Stylus. Depending on the preprocessor you want to use, there’s a different installation method. Jeet’s official page describes all the steps you should follow in order to include the grid in your projects.
Based on the Sass version of it, I set up a demo project. I’ll refer to it in an upcoming section. For now, let’s just look at its basic structure:
Could you explain this more? I don’t quite understand it.
The only time I see frameworks make yo uadd HTML is if you are implementing the grid. However, since most frameworks are based on floats, it’s customary to add the parent just to contain the floated elements.
I’m not sure what other examples you give that show it doesn’t add additional markup (compared to other frameworks?)
Could you be more specific? I couldn’t quite pinpoint an example showcasing this main benefit.
Other than that, I mean it’s somewhat useful to have the custom sizes for the column size, but that’s not exactly original; at my work we’ve modified the foundation CSS file to include some more specific sizes (only halves though) to help be more precise with our design.
I’m not trying to be rude or anything; I just want to hear what makes this worth using . What stops, for example, my team from just using a framework and modifying it like we did (apposed to Jeet?) I’m sure we were not the first people to modify frameworks.
Without jumping on Georges toes. I see Jeet not adding ‘any additional markup’ in light of something like Bootstrap or Zurb (both extremely popular frameworks (both of which George mentions at the top of the article)) and Harry Roberts’ CSS Wizardry Grids that force you to include the grid within the markup. With the idea being you then put the actual HTML you’re wanting to use within it.
I haven’t, personally, seen many grid systems that allow you to use fractions as well as decimals (and a combination of both) which, I feel, makes Jeet stand out a little more.
Obviously there’s nothing stopping you or your team from doing what you feel necessary for your work be it modify someone elses work to suit or deciding to write something from scratch.
It’d be great if you could share your solution so everyone can benefit. I love looking and learning from how other people use Sass in their projects.
I’m still confused though what grid markup he’s forcing you to use though. I mean if you were going to use a two column layout, grid framework or no grid framework, you’re going to want (e.g. two columns float) you’ll want a parent and then two children elements.
Foundation and Bootstrap all “force” that on you but you’d do that same approach anyway! That’s what I don’t understand.
And no you are correct most don’t allow fractions, and while it’s amazing jeet offers this (since it’s annoying that 12 columns must be spread over 100%) it’s not exactly something I’d switch over to for in exchange of all the functionality of Foundation or Bootstrap.
What HTML could you possibly want though that frameworks force you to avoid? That’s what I don’t get. A two column floated layout will make you (if you know what you are doing) have a parent and then two floated elements side by side. A framework encourages that idea with their structured approach.
I’m still waiting on an example that shows where this isn’t feasible with frameworks.
Again, not trying to be rude but I just don’t see what frameworks are restricting here. Give me an example.
Also, using grid layout basically only sets the width and floats - leaving design and everything else up to you.
I might very well be having a brain fart and there is an obvious restriction that I’m not thinking of! Not saying I’m right here at all; genuine curiosity here. Wasn’t aware of any HTML restriction with frameworks.
If you’re adding ‘content’ directly into a div that has some utility classes for a grid system, like Bootstrap or Foundation. You’re tying that content to that grid.
The idea is to abstract the grid from the content, a separation of concerns, so that it’d make it more portable if needed. Jeet get’s rid of the need for the grid div elements as it’s in the CSS (Sass) which I’d suggest is a lot easier to edit than picking through various divs with grid classes added to it for responsive web design.
Obviously there are two trains of thought here in regards to using a grid system within your markup or within your CSS. I, personally, prefer to add it to the CSS, like Jeet does.
Ah ok I understand what you are trying to say now. I understand that.
I think the article does a poor job of explaining this (actually I don’t think they explain that at all) so thanks for the help on that.
I do understand the usefulness (albeit I’m not sure how OFTEN this would come up? I’ve managed everything so far without the need for this but I can imagine situations which this would have been useful) that Jeet is offering here. Thanks!
I wasn’t trying to insinuate I had conflicting views. Merely stating that I failed to see the authors point (again, because no explanation was given so I was left to imagination.) I actually do see your point and agree there are cases where this is useful.
I pitched an article to them (just an idea; I didn’t say I’d write it) over 3 weeks ago, even sent Sitepoint a message on FB, and the survey that Sitepoint gave out, I EVEN sent it in there (with also a request to check their e-mail)) but STILL no one has responded. I’m a bit offended/shocked that no one appears to be checking their e-mail; or at the very least I didn’t get a response.
It wasn’t a ground breaking article anyway; just something that I saw the internet lacked on.
Thanks for taking the time to read the article. The advantage of Jeet is its flexibility. Frameworks such as Bootstrap and Foundation require extra markup (div) that can be difficult to maintain. Of course, you can make your code more efficient if you customize them. On the other hand, Jeet doesn’t need any additional div or customization. All you have to do is to define a class name and then apply the mixins you want to it. So, the complexity is in CSS which is handled by mixins.
Hey Ryan — which address did you send your pitch to? I haven’t gone through all survey results yet (there are a lot), but if you’re still interested, you can pitch an article directly to me via PM here, or to @Adam, or to one of the SitePoint editors (like @sturobson or @louislazaris).
Thanks, Stuart got in touch directly. And it turns out that it was 11/17/14 that I originally sent the e-mail so it’s beyond 2 months; not 3 weeks like I thought .
I had e-mailed an undisclosed e-mail (don’t want to say who I sent it to publicly) but I only pitched an idea; didn’t want to actually write it myself. Those who have read my own website articles probably are frustrated at my writing .
Back to the topic at hand…
@georgemarts, I am able now to see what flexibility this offers. It saves some of the ground work that you’d have to otherwise do. I can appreciate how this will be useful. Thanks for the great article (although I’m holding true that I think it should have been explained better; but I’m just a disgruntled person since I didn’t get it right away; that’s my own fault)
Keep up the good work.
@Ophelie Stuart (in this thread) messaged me and I talked to him. If you really want to know who I sent it to, then you can follow up with him. I don’t want the person to get in any trouble.
Agreed. This doesn’t really seem like anything new to me. I wrote a “grid on demand” like this some time ago called Ignition and popped it on GitHub, although I don’t manage to do much development in anger any more to actually use it. Susy is great, too.
However, having more people work on tools like this is generally a good thing - It gives developers more choice, and can lead to better ways being found to deal with the obstacles we face every day.
. What stops, for example, my team from just using a framework and modifying it like we did (apposed to Jeet?) I’m sure we were not the first people to modify frameworks.
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