twitter bootstrap 3 - Multi column forms with fieldsets

Question

Sorry for the vague title, I wasn't sure how to describe it better. I'm currently upgrading a website to bootstrap 3 and got a little problem with multiple inputs in one form row.

In bootstrap 2, I would have simply created two .controls.controls-row with .spanX elements inside to create the necessary columns. However, as these are removed in bootstrap 3, I replaced them with .form-group and the new column classes.

If I have two rows inside the form (resp. fieldset in this case), the first one becomes non-editable if the second one is a one-column row (see code and attached screenshot below).

I inspected the elements with firebug and saw that the .col-sm-12 from the second fieldset lays over the .form-group and does not let the user click the elements inside. In the first fieldset with the .col-sm-12 first, everything works fine.

I also tried placing a .row around each .form-group which solves the issue, but increases the width of the form line, so it does no longer has a left margin inside the fieldset.

Is there a way to solve this without increasing the form-row width?

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: I added the generated code as a jsFiddle

%fieldset
  %legend= t('.login_information')
  .form-group
    .col-sm-12
      = f.label :login
      = f.text_field :login, :class => 'form-control', :required => true

  .form-group
    .col-sm-6
      = f.label :password
      = f.password_field :password, :class => 'form-control'
    .col-sm-6
      = f.label :password_confirmation
      = f.password_field :password_confirmation, :class => 'form-control'

%fieldset
  %legend= t('.personal_details')
  .form-group
    .col-sm-4
      = f.label :title
      = f.text_field :title, :class => 'form-control'
    .col-sm-4
      = f.label :firstname
      = f.text_field :firstname, :class => 'form-control', :required => true
    .col-sm-4
      = f.label :lastname
      = f.text_field :lastname,  :class => 'form-control', :required => true

  .form-group
    .col-sm-12
      = f.label :email
      = f.text_field :email, :class => 'form-control email', :required => true

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18428871/multi-column-forms-with-fieldsets

Answer 1

There are a couple of things that need to be adjusted in your layout:

1. You are nesting col elements within form-group elements. This should be the other way around (the form-group should be within the col-sm-xx element).

2. You should always use a row div for each new "row" in your design. In your case, you would need at least 5 rows (Username, Password and co, Title/First/Last name, email, Language). Otherwise, your problematic .col-sm-12 is still on the same row with the above 3 .col-sm-4 resulting in a total of columns greater than 12, and causing the overlap problem.

Here is a fixed demo.

And an excerpt of what the problematic section HTML should become:

<fieldset>
    <legend>Personal Information</legend>
    <div class='row'>
        <div class='col-sm-4'>    
            <div class='form-group'>
                <label for="user_title">Title</label>
                <input class="form-control" id="user_title" name="user[title]" size="30" type="text" />
            </div>
        </div>
        <div class='col-sm-4'>
            <div class='form-group'>
                <label for="user_firstname">First name</label>
                <input class="form-control" id="user_firstname" name="user[firstname]" required="true" size="30" type="text" />
            </div>
        </div>
        <div class='col-sm-4'>
            <div class='form-group'>
                <label for="user_lastname">Last name</label>
                <input class="form-control" id="user_lastname" name="user[lastname]" required="true" size="30" type="text" />
            </div>
        </div>
    </div>
    <div class='row'>
        <div class='col-sm-12'>
            <div class='form-group'>

                <label for="user_email">Email</label>
                <input class="form-control required email" id="user_email" name="user[email]" required="true" size="30" type="text" />
            </div>
        </div>
    </div>
</fieldset>