iainurquhart / jquery-match-height

a robust, responsive equal heights plugin for jQuery

jquery.matchHeight.js

matchHeight makes the height of all selected elements exactly equal.
It handles many edge cases that cause similar plugins to fail.

brm.io/jquery-match-height

Demo

See the jquery.matchHeight.js demo.

Features

• row aware, handles floating elements
• responsive, automatically updates on window resize (can be throttled for performance)
• handles mixed padding, margin, border values (even if every element has them different)
• handles images and other media (updates automatically after loading)
• handles hidden or none-visible elements (e.g. those inside tab controls)
• accounts for box-sizing
• data attributes API
• tested in IE8+, Chrome, Firefox, Chrome Android
• can be removed when needed
• maintain scroll position correctly

Status

Current version is v0.5.2. I've fully tested it and it works well, but if you use it make sure you test fully too. Please report any issues you find.

Install

jQuery is required, so include it first.
Download jquery.matchHeight.js and include the script in your HTML file:

<script src="jquery.matchHeight.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Or install using Bower

bower install matchHeight

Usage

$(elements).matchHeight(byRow);

Where byRow is a boolean that enables or disables row detection, default is true.
You should apply this on the DOM ready event.

See the included test.html for a working example.

Examples

$(function() {
	$('.item').matchHeight();
});

Will set all elements with the class item to the height of the tallest.
If the items are on multiple rows, the items of each row will be set to the tallest of that row.

<div data-mh="my-group">My text</div>
<div data-mh="my-group">Some other text</div>
<div data-mh="my-other-group">Even more text</div>
<div data-mh="my-other-group">The last bit of text</div>

Will set both elements in my-group to the same height, then both elements in my-other-group to be the same height respectively.

See the included test.html for a working example.

Advanced Usage

There are a few internal properties and functions you should know about:

Data API

Use the data attribute data-match-height="group-name" (or data-mh shorthand) where group-name is an arbitrary string to denote which elements should be considered as a group.

All elements with the same group name will be set to the same height when the page is loaded, regardless of their position in the DOM, without any extra code required.

Note that byRow will be enabled when using the data API, if you don't want this then use the alternative method above.

Removing

It is possible to remove any matchHeight bindings for a given set of elements like so

$('.item').matchHeight('remove');

Manually trigger an update

$.fn.matchHeight._update()

If you need to manually trigger an update of all currently set equal heights groups, for example if you've modified some content.

Manually apply match height

$.fn.matchHeight._apply(elements, byRow)

Use the apply function directly if you wish to avoid the automatic update functionality.

Throttling resize updates

$.fn.matchHeight._throttle = 80;

By default, the _update method is throttled to execute at a maximum rate of once every 80ms. Decreasing the above _throttle property will update your layout quicker, appearing smoother during resize, at the expense of performance. If you experience lagging or freezing during resize, you should increase the _throttle property.

Maintain scroll position

$.fn.matchHeight._maintainScroll = true;

Under certain conditions where the size of the page is dynamically changing, such as during resize or when adding new elements, browser bugs cause the page scroll position to change unexpectedly.

If you are observing this behaviour, use the above line to automatically attempt to force scroll position to be maintained (approximately). This is a global setting and by default it is false.

Accessing groups directly

$.fn.matchHeight._groups

The array that contains all element groups that have had matchHeight applied. Used for automatically updating on resize events. Search and modify this array if you need to remove any groups or elements, for example if you're deleting elements.

Changelog

To see what's new or changed in the latest version, see the changelog

License

jquery.matchHeight.js is licensed under The MIT License (MIT)
Copyright (c) 2014 Liam Brummitt

This license is also supplied with the release and source code.
As stated in the license, absolutely no warranty is provided.

Why not use CSS?

Making robust, responsive equal height columns for arbitrary content is difficult or impossible to do with CSS alone (at least without hacks or trickery, in a backwards compatible way).

Note you should probably ensure your layout is still usable if JavaScript is disabled.