Baseline is Twitter's toolkit for kickstarting CSS for websites, apps, and more. It includes base CSS styles for typography, forms, buttons, tables, grids, navigation, alerts, and more.
You can use Twitter Baseline in one of two ways: just drop the compiled CSS into any new project and start cranking, or run LESS on your site and compile on the fly like a boss.
Use this option if you want all the styles of Baseline, but none of the extra power of LESS.
<link type="text/css" href="css/baseline.css" media="all" />
Use this option to make full use of Baseline's LESS variables, mixins, and nesting in CSS.
<link rel="stylesheet/less" type="text/css" href="less/baseline.less" media="all" /> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/less-1.0.41.min.js"></script>
Bootstrap is a super awesome pack of mixins and variables to be used in conjunction with LESS, a CSS preprocessor for faster and easier web development, that we used to build Baseline.
Here are some of the highlights of what's included in Twitter Baseline as part of Bootstrap. Head over to the Bootstrap website or Github project page to download and learn more.
Variables in LESS are perfect for maintaining and updating your CSS headache free. When you want to change a color value or a frequently used value, update it in one spot and you're set.
// Links @link-color: #0069d6; @link-hover-color: darken(@link-color, 10); // Grays @white: #fff; @gray-lighter: #ccc; @gray-light: #777; @gray: #555; @gray-dark: #333; @black: #000; // Accent Colors @blue: #08b5fb; @blue-dark: #0069d6; @green: #46a546; @red: #9d261d; @yellow: #ffc40d; @orange: #f89406; @pink: #c3325f; @purple: #7a43b6; // Baseline @baseline: 20px;
LESS also provides another style of commenting in addition to CSS's normal /* ... */ syntax.
// This is a comment /* This is also a comment */
Mixins are basically includes or partials for CSS, allowing you to combine a block of code into one. They're great for vendor prefixed properties like box-shadow, cross-browser gradients, font stacks, and more. Below is a sample of the mixins that are included with Bootstrap in Baseline.
// Font Stacks
.font(@weight: normal, @size: 14px, @lineheight: 20px) {
font-size: @size;
font-weight: @weight;
line-height: @lineheight;
}
.sans-serif(@weight: normal, @size: 14px, @lineheight: 20px) {
font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: @size;
font-weight: @weight;
line-height: @lineheight;
}
// Drop shadows
.box-shadow(@shadow: 0 1px 3px rgba(0,0,0,.25)) {
-webkit-box-shadow: @shadow;
-moz-box-shadow: @shadow;
box-shadow: @shadow;
}
// Gradients
#gradient {
.horizontal(@startColor: #555, @endColor: #333) {
background-color: @endColor;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-image: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, right top, from(@startColor), to(@endColor));
background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(right center, @startColor, @endColor);
background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(right center, @startColor, @endColor);
background-image: -o-linear-gradient(left, @startColor, @endColor);
background-image: -khtml-gradient(linear, left top, right top, from(@startColor), to(@endColor));
filter: e(%("progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Gradient(StartColorStr='%d', EndColorStr='%d', GradientType=1)",@startColor,@endColor));
-ms-filter: %("progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorStr='%d', EndColorStr='%d', GradientType=1))",@startColor,@endColor);
}
.vertical(@startColor: #555, @endColor: #333) {
background-color: @endColor;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-image: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(@startColor), to(@endColor));
background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(@startColor, @endColor);
background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(@startColor, @endColor);
background-image: -o-linear-gradient(top, @startColor, @endColor);
background-image: -khtml-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(@startColor), to(@endColor));
filter: e(%("progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Gradient(StartColorStr='%d', EndColorStr='%d', GradientType=0)",@startColor,@endColor));
-ms-filter: %("progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorStr='%d', EndColorStr='%d', GradientType=0))",@startColor,@endColor);
}
}
Get fancy and perform some match to generate flexible and powerful mixins like the one below.
// Roll your own grid system
@grid_columns: 16;
@grid_column_width: 40px;
@grid_gutter_width: 20px;
.columns(@column_span: 1) {
display: inline;
float: left;
width: (@grid_column_width * @column_span) + (@grid_gutter_width * (@column_span - 1));
margin-left: @grid_gutter_width;
&:first-child {
margin-left: 0;
}
}
The default grid system provided as part of Baseline is a 940px wide 16-column grid. It's a flavor of the popular 960 grid system, but without the additional margin/padding on the left and right sides.
As shown here, a basic layout can be created with two "columns," each spanning a number of the 16 foundational columns we defined as part of our grid system. See the examples below for more variations.
<div class="row">
<div class="span6 columns">
...
</div>
<div class="span10 columns">
...
</div>
</div>
A standard typographic hierarchy for structuring your webpages.
Nullam quis risus eget urna mollis ornare vel eu leo. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Nullam id dolor id nibh ultricies vehicula ut id elit.
Using emphasis, addresses, & abbreviations
<strong>
<em>
<address>
<abbr>
Emphasis tags (<strong> and <em>) should be used to add visual distinction between a word or phrase and its surrounding copy. Use <strong> for plain old attention and <em> for slick attention and titles.
Fusce dapibus, tellus ac cursus commodo, tortor mauris condimentum nibh, ut fermentum massa justo sit amet risus. Maecenas faucibus mollis interdum. Nulla vitae elit libero, a pharetra augue.
The address element is used for—you guessed it!—addresses. Here's how it looks:
Note: Each line in an address must end with a line-break (<br />) to properly structure the content as it is read in real life without any styles applied.
For abbreviations and acronyms, use the abbr tag (acronym is deprecated in HTML5). Put the shorthand form within the tag and set a title for the complete name.
<blockquote>
<p>
<cite>
Be sure to wrap your blockquote around paragraph and cite tags. When citing a source, use the cite element. The CSS will automatically preface a name with an em dash (—).
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua...
Dr. Julius Hibbert
<ul><ul.unstyled><ol>dl
<table>
<thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>
<td>
<colspan>
<caption>
Tables are great—for a lot of things. Great tables, however, need a bit of markup love to be useful, scalable, and readable (at the code level). Here are a few tips to help.
Always wrap your column headers in a thead such that hierarchy is thead > tr > th.
Similar to the column headers, all your table's body content should be wrapped in a tbody so your hierarchy is tbody > tr > td.
All tables will be automatically styled with only the essential borders to ensure readability and maintain structure. No need to add extra classes or attributes.
| # | First Name | Last Name | Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Your | Mom | English |
| 2 | Joe | Sixpack | English |
| 3 | Stu | Dent | Code |
<table class="common-table"> ... </table>
Get a little fancy with your tables by adding zebra-striping—just add the .zebra-striped class.
| # | First Name | Last Name | Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Your | Mom | English |
| 2 | Joe | Sixpack | English |
| 3 | Stu | Dent | Code |
<table class="common-table zebra-striped"> ... </table>
Taking the previous example, we improve the usefulness of our tables by providing sorting functionality via jQuery and the Tablesorter plugin. Click any column's header to change the sort.
| # | First Name | Last Name | Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Your | Mom | English |
| 2 | Joe | Sixpack | English |
| 3 | Stu | Dent | Code |
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery/jquery.tablesorter.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function() {
$("table#sortTableExample").tablesorter( {sortList: [[1,0]]} );
});
</script>
<table class="common-table zebra-striped">
...
</table>
All forms are given default styles to present them in a readable and scalable way. Styles are provided for text inputs, select lists, textareas, radio buttons and checkboxes, and buttons.
Add .form-stacked to your form's HTML and you'll have labels on top of their fields instead of to their left. This works great if your forms are short or you have two columns of inputs for heavier forms.
As a convention, buttons are used for actions while links are used for objects. For instance, "Download" could be a button and "recent activity" could be a link.
All buttons default to a light gray style, but a blue .primary class is available. Plus, rolling your own styles is easy peasy.
Button styles can be applied to anything with the .btn applied. Typically you'll want to apply these to only a, button, and select input elements. Here's how it looks:
Fancy larger or smaller buttons? Have at it!
One-line messages for highlighting the failure, possible failure, or success of an action. Particularly useful for forms.
For messages that require a bit of explanation, we have paragraph style alerts. These are perfect for bubbling up longer error messages, warning a user of a pending action, or just presenting information for more emphasis on the page.