Breakpoint

Breakpoint aims to take some of the pain out of creating a responsive layout. Breakpoint figures out the minimum screen size needed to achieve the layout you want and creates the media query for you.

The Grid

Breakpoint is a mobile first fluid layout that can be triggered at a break point to go fixed. Styles cascade from smaller break points up into larger ones. The breakpoint mixin provides a simple method of setting element sizes when certain break points become available. Media queries for any number of columns are automatically generated when the screen becomes wide enough for their display. Everything is calculated from the column and gutter size width variables.

Simply stated you just need to know how many columns you need for a layout and breakpoint will generate the media query needed to trigger that layout.

Grid Setup

You can setup your project by defining a couple variables needed to configure your grid.

$column:	 60px;	// column-width of your grid in pixels
$gutter:	 20px;	// gutter-width of your grid in pixels
$columns:	 16;	// maximum number of columns needed for layout
$fixed-grid: 8;		// number of columns to trigger fixed grid
$ie-support: false; // number of columns for vintage ie
$show-grid:  false; // shows a visual grid overlay

Setting $column $gutter and $columns define your grid. Breakpoint uses these values to generate the size of elements and the media queries necessary to trigger those element sizes.

$fixed-grid sets the number of columns necessary to transform the grid from a fluid to a fixed layout.

IE Support

$ie-support set the number of columns that vintage IE should use as a layout. Since breakpoint generates most of your structure inside media queries vintage IE won't see it and thus serve the single column fluid layout. $ie-support will make sure that a single, fixed grid layout gets served to vintage IE without media queries. You need to make sure that the column count you set for $ie-support matches another layout in your code.

Grid Overlay

Setting $show-grid to true will generate a visual overlay of your grid for testing.

The Breakpoint Mixin

breakpoint() is the mixin you use to create layouts for a specific breakpoint. You pass the number of columns you want on screen as an argument and breakpoint creates the media query for you.

@include breakpoint(8) {
  .container  { width: col(8); }
  .main       { width: col(5); }
  .sidebar    { width: col(3); }
}

@include breakpoint(12) {
  .container  { width: col(12); }
  .main       { width: col(8); }
  .sidebar    { width: col(4); }
}

The code above generates the following markup...

@media (min-width: 41.25em) {
  .container { width: 38.75em; }
  .main      { width: 23.75em; }
  .sidebar   { width: 13.75em; }
}

@media (min-width: 61.25em) {
  .container { width: 58.75em; }
  .main      { width: 38.75em; }
  .sidebar   { width: 18.75em; }
}

Sandboxing

Breakpoint uses a mobile first approach to cascading styles up to larger layouts. Sometimes it might be necessary to sandbox some styles between two breakpoints to prevent them from cascading up to larger layouts. The breakpoint() mixin will accept a second argument for cases like this and generate a min/max width media query for those styles.

@include breakpoint(9, 11) {
  .main { /* sandboxed styles */ }
}

will generate...

@media (min-width: 46.25em) and (max-width: 56.25em) {
  .main { /* sandboxed styles */ }
}

Pro Tip: If you set the min column to 0 when sandboxing then breakpoint will create a max width media query. Use this if you need styles to cascade down instead of up.

Credits

Breakpoint uses the following frameworks and technologies:

H5BP, normalize.css, Frameless Grid, Sass, Compass