Help

Reporting bugs and issues

Report bugs and issues on GitHub.

Guidelines

The issues tracker is for bugs and issues — when Isotope doesn’t work as expected. It is not for implementation issues — when you are having trouble setting up Isotope. Consider a Support License for implementation issues. If you’re not sure, go ahead and submit an issue.

Support license

If you’ve tried everything and would really like to get my eyes looking at your code, you can purchase a Support License from Metafizzy.

Support License is included with Isotope Commercial License.

Additional resources

Unloaded media

Most layout modes (i.e masonry, fitRows) need to measure the size of each item to appropriately account for its space in the layout. Unloaded media files like images and @font-face fonts can throw off layout and cause item elements to overlap one another. Ideally, Isotope layouts should be initialized after all inner content has loaded.

Images

Inline dimensions

For images, the best method is to specify the width and height of images inline.

<img src="img-file.jpg" width="280" height="160" />

If you’re using a PHP-based CMS, you can use the getimagesize function.

imagesLoaded plugin

The next best solution is to use the imagesLoaded plugin included with Isotope. It’s a small plugin that finds all the images in a context, and fires a callback function once all the images have loaded.

var $container = $('#container');

$container.imagesLoaded( function(){
  $container.isotope({
    // options...
  });
});

$(window).load()

Another solution is to initialize Isotope inside $(window).load() instead of $(document).ready(). This will trigger Isotope after all the media on the page has loaded.

$(window).load(function(){
  $('#container').isotope({
    // options...
  });
});

@font-face fonts

Both Typekit and Google WebFont Loader provide font events to control scripts based on how fonts are loaded.

Accessing the instance

Similar to jQuery UI, Isotope stores a instance containing properties, settings and methods with jQuery.data. You can access the instance with the 'isotope' namespace.

var $container = $('#container');

// initialize Isotope instance
$container.isotope({
  // options...
});

// get Isotope instance
var isotopeInstance = $container.data('isotope');
isotopeInstance.options; // options
isotopeInstance.$filteredAtoms; // jQuery object of filtered & sorted item elements
isotopeInstance.masonry.columnWidth; // Layout mode specific properties

CSS transforms in Opera

Currently, using CSS transforms in Opera distorts text rendering. To avoid this issue, I recommend disabling Isotope to use transforms.

Isotope’s default options are already set to not use CSS transforms in Opera.

// Isotope default options
hiddenStyle : Modernizr.csstransforms && !$.browser.opera ? 
  { opacity : 0, scale : 0.001 } : // browsers support CSS transforms, not Opera
  { opacity : 0 }, // other browsers, including Opera
visibleStyle : Modernizr.csstransforms && !$.browser.opera ? 
  { opacity : 1, scale : 1 } : // browsers support CSS transforms, not Opera
  { opacity : 1 }, // other browsers, including Opera
animationEngine : $.browser.opera ? 'jquery' : 'best-available',

Also note that the recommended transition CSS is missing declarations for Opera.

Infinite Scroll with filtering or sorting

I recommend against using Infinite Scroll with filtering or sorting. This combination produces a unnecessarily complex user interaction that will frustrate your users. New content gets added, but part of it might be hidden. There is no way for the user to tell what gets hidden or re-arranged when Infinite Scroll adds more content. Exercise moderation with your Isotope implementation.

If you do plan on implementing Infinite Scroll with filtering or sorting (which is a bad idea), use the insert method instead of appended.

Flash

Using CSS transforms with Flash content is a bit buggy in Safari and Firefox. This is problematic when using Isotope on item elements that contain Flash content like YouTube or Vimeo videos, Flash ads, or Flash audio players.

The best way to resolve this issue is to disable CSS transforms by setting the transformsEnabled option to false.

Poor type rendering in WebKit

Type rendering may appear poor in WebKit browsers like Chrome and Safari. This is because of Isotope’s activation of hardware acceleration. The solution is to add add a matching background to the item elements. See more: dropshado.ws - Resolving anti-aliasing on WebKit hardware-accelerated elements.

Right-to-left layouts

Isotope can be modified to support right-to-left layouts for languages like Hebrew and Arabic.

See test: Right to left

You’ll need to make the following changes:

JavaScript for right-to-left support

// modify Isotope's absolute position method
$.Isotope.prototype._positionAbs = function( x, y ) {
  return { right: x, top: y };
};

// initialize Isotope
$('#container').isotope({
  transformsEnabled: false
  // other options...
});

CSS for right-to-left support

.isotope .isotope-item {
  -webkit-transition-property: right, top, -webkit-transform, opacity;
     -moz-transition-property: right, top, -moz-transform, opacity;
       -o-transition-property: right, top, -o-transform, opacity;
          transition-property: right, top, transform, opacity;
}

Preventing clicks on filtered items

The recommended CSS for filtering includes pointer-events: none for .isotope-hidden. Unfortunately, Opera and Internet Explorer still let click events propagate with this style in place. But you can still dismiss click events in your click handler by checking to see if the element or element’s parent is a filtered item.

See test: Unclickable filtered

$('.item a').click(function(){
  var $this = $(this);
  // back out if hidden item
  if ( $this.parents('.isotope-item').hasClass('isotope-hidden') ) {
    return;
  }
  // otherwise, continue to do stuff...
  console.log('item was clicked');
});