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CSS Framework Basics Prototyping with Bootstrap Working with Nested Grids and Responsive Images

Posted by Jay Valentine
Jay Valentine
Courses Plus Student 4,389 Points

Why use Col offset when you can just "pull-right"?

Guil Offsets one of the columns in the row to the right by using the code "col-sm-offset-4"

Instead of dong that? couldnt you just do

<div class="col-sm-4 pull-right">

2 Answers

Sean T. Unwin
Sean T. Unwin
28,690 Points
Sean T. Unwin
Sean T. Unwin
28,690 Points

Yep, you could. :-)

There is almost always more than one way to do something, particularly with regards to front-end development. That being said, I believe a reason Guil Hernandez is showing the offset capabilities of Bootstrap is because this allows a little more explanation to the reader of the code, i.e. it's explicit -- we want to offset by 6 columns, whereas pull-right, to me at least, does not have the same descriptiveness in the overall design pattern.

For the case described in the video there is only 2 columns so pull-right is definitely a valid option, however if there were 3 or more columns then pull-right may not be the best way to go. For example, it would limit the scalability of the content of that section of the page such as for a really wide-screen display option. Perhaps, that is not a terrific example, but I hope the point comes across regardless.

Ian Svoboda
Ian Svoboda
16,639 Points
Ian Svoboda
Ian Svoboda
16,639 Points

Pull is designed to alter the layout flow, whereas offset is designed to make something sit on another side of the page.

In other words, you would only be using a pull class if you wanted to (for instance) force an element that would normally appear on the left of another element, to appear on the right.

Even the section that describes this is called: Column Ordering. This if nothing else is a great descriptor for what those classes are for.

http://getbootstrap.com/css/#grid-column-ordering

See the example they provide there and you can see a visual example.