Stylus PX to REM Mixin

By  on  

The REM unit is the hottest thing since Christina Ricci ... it's hot.  And it's especially hot when it comes to font size.  Rather than paraphrase a bunch of documentation as to why REM is important, I'd like to point you to Jonathan Snook's outstanding Font sizing with rem post, where he explains sizing with PX, EM, and how REM comes into the picture.  Here's how I implemented REM sizing within Stylus with a PX fallback!

The Stylus CSS

My method uses two mixins to accomplish the feat: one to set the base font-size and another to rem-ify the pixel unit:

set-font-size(value) {
    font-size: value; /* add PX (or original value) as backup */

    if (value is inherit) {
        /* do nothing, "inherit" has no unit */
    } else {
        font-size: remify(value);
    }
}

remify(value) { /* separate mixin, so it can be used elsewhere */
    u = unit(value);

    if (u is 'px') {
        return unit(value/16, 'rem');
    } else {
        return unit(value, u);
    }
}

The 16 within the remify unit represents the base font size, in pixels, that rems should be calculated by. The usage and output looks as follows:

.smaller {
	set-font-size(13px);
}

/*
	yields:

	.smaller {
		font-size: 13px;
		font-size: .8125rem;
	}

*/

Don't forget to set the base font size on the html element, usually 100%.  Also remember this mixin assumes a PX font is passed in, so if you aren't looking to use PX as backup, this isn't the solution for you.  If you do, however, there's no hurt in using these Stylus mixins!

Recent Features

  • By
    5 Awesome New Mozilla Technologies You’ve Never Heard Of

    My trip to Mozilla Summit 2013 was incredible.  I've spent so much time focusing on my project that I had lost sight of all of the great work Mozillians were putting out.  MozSummit provided the perfect reminder of how brilliant my colleagues are and how much...

  • By
    5 HTML5 APIs You Didn’t Know Existed

    When you say or read "HTML5", you half expect exotic dancers and unicorns to walk into the room to the tune of "I'm Sexy and I Know It."  Can you blame us though?  We watched the fundamental APIs stagnate for so long that a basic feature...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Build a Calendar Using PHP, XHTML, and CSS

    One of the website features my customers love to provider their web users is an online dynamic calendar. An online calendar can be used for events, upcoming product specials, memos, and anything else you can think of. I've taken some time to completely...

  • By
    JavaScript Copy to Clipboard

    "Copy to clipboard" functionality is something we all use dozens of times daily but the client side API around it has always been lacking; some older APIs and browser implementations required a scary "are you sure?"-style dialog before the content would be copied to clipboard -- not great for...

Discussion

  1. You can also use this REM converter, which is really nice! https://offroadcode.com/prototypes/rem-calculator/

  2. I’ve been doing it px-ify style instead of remify!

    $default-font-size = 14px
    
    font-size(_size)
      if unit(_size) == 'rem'
        font-size: (_size * $default-font-size)px
      font-size: _size
    
    .bigger
      font-size(1.2rem)
    
  3. The first sentence in this post cracks me up every time. Oh and if anyone wants to remify multiple values you can just:

    remify() {
        remified = ();
    
        for arg in arguments {
            push(remified, unit(arg/16, 'rem'));
        }
        
        return remified;
    }
    

    so

    .foo {
        padding: remify(16px 32px 8px);
    }
    

    yields:

    .foo {
        padding: 1rem 2rem 0.5rem;
    }
    
  4. Mohamed Elkebir

    It’s best to let this code work with multi/mixed-values:

    pixify(property, sizes, base = 16)
      pixels = ()
      rems = ()
    
      for j, i in sizes
        if typeof(j) is 'unit'
          push(pixels, unit(j * base, 'px'))
          push(rems, unit(j, 'rem'))
        else
          push(pixels, j)
          push(rems, j)
    
      {property}: pixels
      {property}: rems
    

    Usage:

    pixify(border, 0.3 solid red)
    

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!