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@mirisuzanne
Created July 19, 2012 05:42
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Rainbow stripe mixin with SCSS + Compass

Rainbow stripe mixin with SCSS + Compass

I'm trying to make a horizontal rainbow stripe background gradient mixin, but I feel like this is way too verbose. How can it be better?

Goals:

  1. [check] Use variables for colors so they can be swapped out for different colors.
  2. [check] The widths are hard coded for 8 colors. Can it be done smarter where it adjusts to the number of colors you add? Or is that asking too much?
  3. [check] The colors are defined twice for the color starts and stops. Can this be done better?
  4. [see below] Right now I define the colors as variables at the top level, then pass them in the mixin. Should they instead be created inside the mixin and then colors are brought in as arguments? Or does that matter?

Variables:

// You could set individual variables for each color as well.
// You would still pass them all as a single argument,
// or join them into a single variable before passing, as you see fit.
$mycolors: red orange yellow green blue indigo violet;

Function:

// Returns a striped gradient for use anywhere gradients are accepted.
// - $position: the starting position or angle of the gradient.
// - $colors: a list of all the colors to be used.
@function rainbow($position, $colors) {
  $colors: if(type-of($colors) != 'list', compact($colors), $colors);
  $gradient: compact();
  $width: 100% / length($colors);

  @for $i from 1 through length($colors) {
    $pop: nth($colors,$i);
    $new: $pop ($width * ($i - 1)), $pop ($width * $i);
    $gradient: join($gradient, $new, comma);
  }

  @return linear-gradient($position, $gradient);
}

Application:

.rainbow { 
  @include background-image(rainbow(left, $colors));
}
@jina
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jina commented Jul 19, 2012

Oh cool I'll try that when I get into work tomorrow. Thanks! :) I knew it had to be something about parenthesis. :)

@karlbright
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Oh, silly me. I do have the 3.2 alpha installed of Sass.

You could just install that. I don't think Middleman has a version set? I could be wrong though :)

gem "sass", "~> 3.2.0.alpha.237"

@jina
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jina commented Jul 19, 2012

Ah, okay. Last time I tried I ran into some trouble, but I'll give it another go tomorrow. :)

@mirisuzanne
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Author

Yes, it's true. Sorry, I didn't think about it. Older versions of Middleman did have dependency issues with Sass 3.2, but the latest version of middleman does not. Upgrade both, and you should be fine.

@jina
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jina commented Jul 19, 2012

Oh sweet!!! That's awesome. Updating it the moment I get to my desk. Thanks again!!!

@jina
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jina commented Jul 19, 2012

IT WORKS!!! hugs all around!!!

@jina
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jina commented Jul 21, 2012

Check out the CodePen.io I made so you can see this in action: http://codepen.io/jina/pen/iosjp

@markuppatterns
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How to set different width to each color of stripe?

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