space.less — toolkit for managing negative space

Designed to make margins, paddings, gutters consistent across the project.

From design point of view this is an argeement on what distance to use between objects in UI layout. From frontend perspective this is a set of classnames to rule margins and paddings on different media queries breakpoints. Together it is a part of communication language between designers and frontend developers.

Installation

Compiled from CDN https://unpkg.com/[email protected]/space.css https://unpkg.com/[email protected]/space.min.css https://unpkg.com/[email protected]/space.min.css.map

NPM npm install space.less --save-dev

Bower bower install space.less --save

Usage in HTML

Link compiled space.css in the head of your page. Apply classes to any HTML element to get desired margins and paddings. See docs for classnames.

Usage in LESS

Install library with npm install space.less --save-dev and include its main file inside your project less file:

@import (less) "./node_modules/space.less/space.less";

That is enough to run library with default parameters.

Default parameters

Parameters stored in mixin:

.space-settings() {

    @spaces: 0, 8px, 16px, 24px, 40px, 64px, 104px, 168px;
    @spacealias: zero, nano, micro, mili, base, kilo, mega, giga;

    // media breakpoints
    @breakpoints:
        ~"(min-width: 576px)",
        ~"(min-width: 768px)",
        ~"(min-width: 992px)",
        ~"(min-width: 1200px)";

    // names for breakpoint suffixes
    @suffixes: xs, sm, md, lg, xl;

    // IMPORTANT: suffixes count should be bigger than breakpoints count by 1
    // suffixes-count = breakpoints-count + 1
}

Redefining parameters

To change any (or every) parameter add setting mixin after import inside your .less file:

@import (less) "./node_modules/space.less/space.less";

.space-settings() {

    @spaces: 0, 5px, 10px, 25px, 50px;
    @spacealias: zero, small, normal, large, huge;

}

Only sizes and names for spacing was redefined in example above. Breakpoint parameters remains default.