Configuring Layout Container and Layout Mode

Responsive Layout is a mechanism for realizing responsive web design. This allows the user to create web pages that have a layout and dimensions dependent on the devices their users use.

AEM realizes responsive layout for your pages using a combination of mechanisms:

• Layout Container component
  This component provides a grid-paragraph system to allow you to add and position components within a responsive grid. It can be used as the default parsys for your page and/or made available to authors in the component browser. 
  
  • The default Layout Container component is defined under:
    /libs/wcm/foundation/components/responsivegrid
  • You can define layout containers:
    • As a component that the user can add to a page.
    • As the default parsys for the page.
    • Both.
      You can have the layout container as standard for the page, while allowing the user to add further layout containers within this; for example, to achieve column control.
• Layout Mode
  Once the layout container is positioned on your page you can use the Layout mode to position content within the responsive grid.
• Emulator
  This allows you to create and edit responsive websites that rearrange the layout according to device/window size by resizing components interactively. The user can then see how the content will be rendered using the Emulator.

With these responsive grid mechanisms you can:

• Use breakpoints (that indicate device grouping) to define differing content behavior based on device layout.
• Hide components based on device group (define on which breakpoint a component will be hidden).
• Use horizontal snap to grid (place components into the grid, resize as required, define when they should collapse/reflow to be side-by-side or above/below).
• Realize column control.

This tasks allow you to see the responsive Emulator on your site.

To enable the emulator to support your pages, you must register your page components. See Registering Page Components for Simulation.

To specify the device groups that appear in the Devices list of the emulator see Specifying the Device Groups.

To include the dmulator you need to link your site to the device groups. See Adding the Devices List (for both the classic and touch-optimized UI).  

These procedures are used to enable the Layout mode on your site.

Breakpoints:

• Are used in responsive design.
• Can be defined:
  • On the page template, from where the settings will be copied to any pages created with that template.
    
  • On the page node, from where the settings will be inherited by any child pages.
• Define a title and a width:
  • The title describes the generic device grouping, with orientation if required; for example phone, tablet, tabletlandscape.
  • The width defines the maximum width in pixels for that generic device grouping. For example, if the breakpoint phone has a width of 768 then that it the maximum width of the layout used for a phone device.
• Are visible as markers at the top of the page editor when you are using the emulator.
• Are inherited from the parent node hierarchy and can be overridden at will.
• There is a default (out-of-the-box) breakpoint which covers everything above the last configured breakpoint.

They can be defined using CRXDE Lite or XML.

Breakpoints are located inside the <jar:content> section of the .context.html under the appropriate template (or content) folder.

An example definition:

Copy the following cq:infoProviders node structure into your parent page component:

/libs/foundation/components/page/cq:infoProviders/responsive

These procedures are required so you can resize components in the Layout mode.

To set the main parsys of your page to be a layout container you need to define the parsys as:

wcm/foundation/components/responsivegrid

In either the:

• Page component
• Page template (for future use)

The following two examples illustrate the definition:

AEM uses LESS to generate parts of the necessary CSS, these need to be included for your projects.

You will also need to create a client library to provide additional configuration and function calls. The following LESS extract is an example of the minimum you need to add to your project:

The base grid definition can be found under:

/etc/clientlibs/wcm/foundation/grid/grid_base.less

Components held within a responsive container will be resized (together with their respective HTML DOM elements) according to the responsive grid size. Therefore, in these circumstances, it is recommended to avoid (or update) definitions of fixed width (contained) DOM elements.

For example:

• Before:
  • width=100px
• After:
  • max-width=100px

Any resizing of a component within the grid will trigger the following listeners as appropriate:

• beforeedit
• beforechildedit
• afteredit
  
• afterchildedit  

To properly resize and update the content of an adaptive image included in a responsive grid, you need to add an afterEdit set to REFRESH_PAGE listener into the EditConfig file of every contained component.

For example:

<cq:listeners jcr:primaryType="cq:EditListenersConfig" afteredit="REFRESH_PAGE" />

The adaptive image mechanism is made available via a script that controls selection of the correct image for the current size of the window. It activates after the DOM is ready or when receiving a dedicated event. Currently the page must be refreshed to properly reflect the result of the user's action.

These tasks allow authors to drag instances of the Layout Container component onto the page.

To allow authors to add further responsive grids to the content pages you need to enable the Layout Container component for your page. You can do this using either:

You can configure the number of columns available for each specific instance of layout container: