Introduction

Get started with Melodic, Inspire’s front-end design system for Web.

Quick start

Using a package manager or need to download the source files? Head to the downloads page.

JavaScript

Many of our components require the use of JavaScript to function. Specifically, they require jQuery, Popper.js, and our own JavaScript plugins. Place the following <script>s near the end of your pages, right before the closing </body> tag, to enable them. jQuery must come first, then Popper.js, and then our JavaScript plugins.

We use jQuery’s slim build, but the full version is also supported.

<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.2.1.slim.min.js" integrity="sha384-KJ3o2DKtIkvYIK3UENzmM7KCkRr/rE9/Qpg6aAZGJwFDMVNA/GpGFF93hXpG5KkN" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/popper.js/1.12.9/umd/popper.min.js" integrity="sha384-ApNbgh9B+Y1QKtv3Rn7W3mgPxhU9K/ScQsAP7hUibX39j7fakFPskvXusvfa0b4Q" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
<!-- insert Melodic <script> tag here -->

Curious which components explicitly require jQuery, our JavaScript, and Popper.js? Click the show components link below. If you’re at all unsure about the general page structure, keep reading for an example page template.

Show components requiring JavaScript
  • Alerts for dismissing
  • Buttons for toggling states and checkbox/radio functionality
  • Carousel for all slide behaviors, controls, and indicators
  • Collapse for toggling visibility of content
  • Dropdowns for displaying and positioning (also requires Popper.js)
  • Modals for displaying, positioning, and scroll behavior
  • Navbar for extending our Collapse plugin to implement responsive behavior
  • Tooltips and popovers for displaying and positioning (also requires Popper.js)
  • Scrollspy for scroll behavior and navigation updates

Important globals

Melodic employs a handful of important global styles and settings that you’ll need to be aware of when using it, all of which are almost exclusively geared towards the normalization of cross browser styles. Let’s dive in.

HTML5 doctype

Melodic requires the use of the HTML5 doctype. Without it, you’ll see some funky incomplete styling, but including it shouldn’t cause any considerable hiccups.

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
  ...
</html>

Responsive meta tag

Melodic is developed mobile first, a strategy in which we optimize code for mobile devices first and then scale up components as necessary using CSS media queries. To ensure proper rendering and touch zooming for all devices, add the responsive viewport meta tag to your <head>.

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, shrink-to-fit=no">

Box-sizing

For more straightforward sizing in CSS, we switch the global box-sizing value from content-box to border-box. This ensures padding does not affect the final computed width of an element, but it can cause problems with some third party software like Google Maps and Google Custom Search Engine.

On the rare occasion you need to override it, use something like the following:

.selector-for-some-widget {
  box-sizing: content-box;
}

With the above snippet, nested elements—including generated content via ::before and ::after—will all inherit the specified box-sizing for that .selector-for-some-widget.

Learn more about box model and sizing at CSS Tricks.

Reboot

For improved cross-browser rendering, we use Reboot to correct inconsistencies across browsers and devices while providing slightly more opinionated resets to common HTML elements.