Question

So this might seem like an obvious question to some, but what is the best practice for aligning versatile span content in a responsive grid? I know you could simply set a pixel height, but wouldn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of keeping things responsive?

Take the below screenshot for instance:

<div class="container">
    <div class="row">
       <div class="span3 well"><p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec facilisis venenatis sollicitudin. Nam eros risus, lobortis a ultricies sed, interdum in mi. Donec elementum ullamcorper odio, vel gravida velit pretium quis. Donec sagittis, sem nec rhoncus tristique, dui ante volutpat nisl, sit amet feugiat velit lorem sagittis turpis. Quisque laoreet arcu et sapien volutpat nec porta augue iaculis. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aenean accumsan feugiat libero, vel fringilla neque euismod vitae. Nullam justo mi, faucibus sagittis pharetra non, egestas sit amet nulla.</p></div>
       <div class="span3 well"><p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec facilisis venenatis sollicitudin. Nam eros risus, lobortis a ultricies sed, interdum in mi. Donec elementum ullamcorper odio, vel gravida velit pretium quis. Donec sagittis, sem nec rhoncus tristique, dui ante volutpat nisl, sit amet feugiat velit lorem sagittis turpis. Quisque laoreet arcu et sapien volutpat nec porta augue iaculis. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aenean accumsan feugiat libero, vel fringilla neque euismod vitae. Nullam justo mi, faucibus sagittis pharetra.</p> </div>
       <div class="span3 well"><p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec facilisis venenatis sollicitudin. Nam eros risus, lobortis a ultricies sed, interdum in mi. Donec elementum ullamcorper odio, vel gravida velit pretium quis. Donec sagittis, sem nec rhoncus tristique, dui ante volutpat nisl, sit amet feugiat velit lorem sagittis turpis. Quisque laoreet arcu et sapien volutpat nec porta augue iaculis. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aenean accumsan feugiat libero.</p> </div>
    </div>    
</div>

You can find the relevant JSfiddle here.

Note: Responsiveness seems to be broken in this JSFiddle for some reason, works fine in my own Twitter Bootstrap application however.

Answer 1

Although your markup doesn’t keep the hierarchy recommended by the bootstrap doc (.container > .row > .span > .well), have you thought about absolute positioning ? No JS involved.

Demo (jsfiddle)

<div class="container" style="position: relative;">
    <div class="row faux-row">
        <div class="span3 well"></div>
        <div class="span3 well"></div>
        <div class="span3 well"></div>
    </div>
    <div class="row vrai-row">
        <div class="span3"><p>...</p></div>
        <div class="span3"><p>...</p></div>
        <div class="span3"><p>...</p></div>
    </div>
</div>

.vrai-row { position: relative;z-index: 101; }

.faux-row { position: absolute;top: 0;left: 0;right: 0;bottom: 0;z-index: 100; }
.faux-row .well {
    height: 100%;
    /* The following is because .span* elements should not have paddings, margins nor borders see http://stackoverflow.com/a/11299934/1478467 */
    box-sizing: border-box;
}

If you want to set padding, margin, borders (styling that actually take space), it should be applied to the real one and the faux one – not the columns themselves, but their children for example.

The downside is that (as it is in the demo) you have to stick to the non-responsive grid (fluid or static). But it should work with a few more rules encapsulated in media queries.

---

Update

Responsiveness is actually not so hard to get, if you keep the .well class on all spans :

Demo responsive (jsfiddle)

@media (max-width: 767px) {
    .faux-row { display: none!important; }
}
@media (min-width: 768px) {
    .vrai-row .well { /* Deactivate well styles */
      background-color: transparent;
      border-color: transparent;
      -webkit-box-shadow: none;
         -moz-box-shadow: none;
              box-shadow: none;
    }
}