Introduction

Masonry is a dynamic grid layout plugin for jQuery. Think of it as the flip-side of CSS floats. Whereas floating arranges elements horizontally then vertically, Masonry arranges elements vertically, positioning each element in the next open spot in the grid. The result minimizes vertical gaps between elements of varying height, just like a mason fitting stones in a wall.

Getting started

Markup

Masonry works on a container element with a group of similar child items.

<div id="container">
  <div class="item">...</div>
  <div class="item">...</div>
  <div class="item">...</div>
  ...
</div>

Add jQuery and the Masonry script. Masonry requires jQuery v1.4.0 and greater.

<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script src="/path/to/jquery.masonry.min.js"></script>

CSS

All sizing of items is handled by your CSS. Items should be floated.

.item {
  width: 220px;
  margin: 10px;
  float: left;
}

Script

It is recommended you specify an itemSelector and columnWidth. There are a number of other options you can specify.

$(function(){
  $('#container').masonry({
    // options
    itemSelector : '.item',
    columnWidth : 240
  });
});

That’s it!

See Demo: Basic multi-column

imagesLoaded plugin

If your content contains any images, you’ll want to ensure that Masonry is triggered after all the images your content has loaded. The included imagesLoaded plugin makes this easy.

var $container = $('#container');
$container.imagesLoaded(function(){
  $container.masonry({
    itemSelector : '.item',
    columnWidth : 240
  });
});

See Demo: Images

Code repository

This project lives on GitHub at github.com/desandro/masonry. There you can grab the latest code and follow development.

Acknowledgments

• Louis-Rémi Babé and Paul Irish for the jQuery SmartResize plugin. De-bounced window resize event handler. Used within Masonry.
• Paul Irish and Luke Shumard for Infinite Scroll. Pretty much Masony’s BFF <3.
• The Modernizr team for Modernizr. Used in most of these demos.
• Paul Irish et. al. for imagesLoaded plugin. Used within Masonry.
• Ralph Holzmann for re-writing the jQuery Plugins/Authoring tutorial and opened my eyes to Plugin Methods pattern.
• Eric Hynds for his article Using $.widget.bridge Outside of the Widget Factory which provided the architecture for Masonry.

Changelog

v2.1: 9 Dec 2011

Pass in a function for columnWidth for easier fluid layouts

v2.0: May 2011

Complete re-write. Uses $.Mason constructor, like jQuery UI widget

Add options gutterWidth, isFitWidth for centering layout, isRTL for right-to-left layout

Add all new methods like appended, and reload

Remove filtering demos

v1.3: 3 Sep 2010

Revamped appendedContent to work with container elements. Plays nice with latest Infinite Scroll.

Revised layout for documentation to allow for more pages.

v1.2: 12 Jun 2010

Support for filtering added

v1.1: 29 Apr 2010

Add animation

v1.0: 7 Dec 2009

Multi-column width support

Appending elements and Infinite Scroll support

Less obstrusive layout. No inserting additional markup.

Automatically binds event to window resizing

v0.4: 14 Jun 2009

Better fluid rearrangement support

v0.1: Feb 2009

Original release

License

jQuery Masonry is licensed under the MIT license. It may be used for personal and commercial applications.