Equal Height Columns

Compatible with PHP 8.2

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Equal Height Columns lets you easily equalize the height of various columns and elements.

Features

• Target unlimited elements and element groups
• Specify simple CSS/jQuery selectors to target elements
• Specify breakpoint to kick in only at certain screen sizes
• Easy to use admin interface
• Heights are equalized immediately after the page has loaded
• Fully responsive (automatically updates on resize and orientationchange events)
• Works on mobile devices
• Works across all modern browsers (including IE8)
• Comes with custom event listener to manually trigger
• Super small – 8kB jQuery file size
• Trigger custom ‘equalheight’ event to force resize

Instructions

1. Navigate to Settings > Equal Height Columns in the WordPress admin.
2. Enter a selector and breakpoint for the first column group.
3. Add/remove column groups by clicking the “+ Add More” and “Remove” buttons.

Advanced

Want to trigger the equalizing of the heights manually? No problem. You can skip entering a selector on the settings page and call the jQuery script yourself using one of two functions:

jQuery( '.selector' ).initEqualHeights();

// Or

jQuery( '.selector' ).equalizeTheHeights();

The difference between these two functions is simply that initEqualHeights() will set up all the events for recalculating the heights when the window is resized or the global equalheights event is triggered, but equalizeTheHeights() will simply equalize the heights without involving any events.

Both functions take three optional arguments, the minimum height (number of pixels), maximum height, and the breakpoint (below which the heights will revert to their original size):

jQuery( '.selector' ).initEqualHeights( minHeight, maxHeight, breakPoint );

So an example might look like this:

jQuery( '.selector' ).initEqualHeights( 200, 500, 768 );

When entering a selector on the settings page or using the initEqualHeights() method this plugin also adds an event ‘equalheights’ to the window, allowing you to easily trigger the equalizing manually. This is useful if you have added new items to the page after it loads via AJAX. You can trigger the event like this:

jQuery( window ).trigger( 'equalheights' );

Another option for controlling which elements get equalized is the equal_height_columns_elements filter. This filter operates on the array of data that gets passed to the JS right before it is passed. This allows for developers to specify selectors that can’t be deleted from the settings page, and for programmaticly building selectors based on dynamic data. Here’s an example of how the filter can be used:

add_filter( 'equal_height_columns_elements', 'custom_ehc_elements' );
function custom_ehc_elements( $elements ) {

    $elements['element-groups']['custom'] = array(
        'selector'   => '.ehc-target', // Selector goes here.
        'breakpoint' => '768',
    );

    return $elements;
}

The keys on the element-groups array used by selectors entered on the settings page will come in as numbered indexes, so to avoid collision it’s best to use named keys for any custom selectors (we’re using ‘custom’ in the example above, but any unique string will work).

This plugin is on Github and pull requests are always welcome.

NEW: Multi rows

On version 1.2.0 we are introducing a new feature (for now, only available via JavaScript) that resolves a common issue if the row number of certain elements varies across breakpoints when the number of columns change.

For example, if we have 2 columns for tablets and 3 columns for desktops, the third element in the group would be positioned on the second row for tablets but on the first row for desktops.

Before this new feature, the equal height would be based on all the elements from the group. Now you can have “subgroups” for each row, and recalculate when the number of columns in the rows change.

To use this new feature add the function once per breakpoint:

jQuery( document ).equalHeight( selector, columns, minWidth, maxWidth );

selector: The selector of the group of elements that you want to apply the equal height.

columns: The number of columns per row on the breakpoint.

minWidth: The minimum width of the breakpoint. Use 1 for mobile.

maxWidth: The maximum width of the breakpoint. You can leave empty for the biggest breakpoint.

The following example would apply equal height for headings with the class .demo-heading in a grid that has 1 column per row on mobile, 2 columns on tablet and 3 columns on desktop:

$( document ).equalHeight( '.demo-heading', 1, 1, 767 ); // 1 columns for 1px - 767px
$( document ).equalHeight( '.demo-heading', 2, 768, 1024 ); // 2 columns for 768px - 1024px
$( document ).equalHeight( '.demo-heading', 3, 1025 ); // 3 columns for 1025px (and above)