October 18, 2016: Fixed typo in CSS snippet.
By default, Gravity Forms outputs it’s forms in a vertical (or column) format. This just means that the form fields are stacked on top of one another all the way down the form. This is ideal for most forms but there are some cases where you may want to display your form horizontally instead. This means the form fields are displayed side by side, in a row. You can do this with Gravity Forms classes.
Gravity Forms can actually get you a decent way towards this goal using the powerful Gravity Forms CSS Ready Class. This method of creating horizontal forms does have some limitations. Here’s an example using the helper styles we provide later in this tutorial.
Horizontal Gravity Form w/ Helper StylesSteps
- Add “gf_simple_horizontal” to the Form’s CSS Class Name Setting
- Add “gf_inline” to each Field’s CSS Class Name Setting
- (optional) Hide the Field Label and Sub Labels
- (optional) Add Helper Styles
1. Add “gf_simple_horizontal” to the Form’s CSS Class Name Setting
For this tutorial, we’ll assume you’ve already used the Gravity Forms form builder to create a form. To get started, visit the Form Settings for the form you want to convert and add the “gf_simple_horizontal” class to the CSS Class Name setting.
2. Add “gf_inline” to each Field’s CSS Class Name Setting
Next, visit the Appearance tab of each field in the form and add the “gf_inline” class to the Custom CSS Class field.
At this point your Gravity Form is now a horizontal form!
There are two additional steps we can take to make this even more streamlined.
3. (optional) Hide the Field Label and Sub Labels
In many cases when implementing a horizontal form, you are putting it in location without a ton of room. We can hide the labels and use placeholders to save a little space. Go ahead and follow our tutorial on how to hide Gravity Form field labels when using placeholders.
Once you’re added support for removing field labels and sublabels, visit the Appearance tab on each field and set visibility to “Hidden” in the Field Label Visibility and Sub-Label Placement dropdown fields.
It will look something like the screenshot below:
4. (optional) Add Helper Styles
Things are looking good but you might notice that some of the fields aren’t properly aligned and the submit button is larger than the inputs. Here are some simple helper styles that can act as a starting point to get your form styled how you want.
Basically, it involves using Gravity Forms alignment settings (column layout) using gf_left_half (left column), gf_right_half (right column), gf_middle_third, gf_left_third, or gf_right_third based on how you’d like to align it. This is an easy way to play around with the form layout and column layout. You can also use gf_list_2col to turn a checkbox list into an equally-spaced two-column format on the front-end.
This code can be copied and pasted into your theme’s style.css stylesheet file. Keep in mind, theme styles are not loaded in preview so you might want to check out GP Live Preview for an easy way to preview your forms directly in your WordPress theme.
| .gf_simple_horizontal_wrapper.gf_browser_chrome ul.gform_fields li.gfield span.name_first, | |
| .gf_simple_horizontal_wrapper.gf_browser_chrome ul.gform_fields li.gfield span.name_middle, | |
| .gf_simple_horizontal_wrapper.gf_browser_chrome ul.gform_fields li.gfield span.name_last { | |
| padding-top: 0 !important; | |
| } | |
| .gf_simple_horizontal_wrapper .field_sublabel_hidden_label .ginput_complex.ginput_container input[type=text], | |
| .gf_simple_horizontal_wrapper .field_sublabel_hidden_label .ginput_complex.ginput_container select { | |
| margin-bottom: 0 !important; | |
| } | |
| .gf_simple_horizontal_wrapper li.hidden_label input { | |
| margin-top: 0 !important; | |
| } | |
| body .gf_simple_horizontal_wrapper .top_label div.ginput_container { | |
| margin-top: 0 !important; | |
| } | |
| .gf_simple_horizontal div.gform_footer.top_label { | |
| width: auto !important; | |
| vertical-align: top !important; | |
| } | |
| .gf_simple_horizontal div.gform_body { | |
| width: auto !important; | |
| } | |
| .gf_simple_horizontal div.gform_footer.top_label input[type="submit"] { | |
| line-height: 26px; | |
| font-size: 13px; | |
| padding: 0 24px; | |
| text-transform: uppercase; | |
| letter-spacing: 1px | |
| } |
Limitations
- This method works best for simple forms with only a few fields.
- This method isn’t a polished solution but it will get you (exactly) 93% of the way there without add-ons.
- This method requires some additional customization to handle responsive styling e.g. for column layouts.
The pros are that it’s available with the Gravity Forms WordPress plugin out of the box and doesn’t require too much effort to get everything looking just right without using add-ons.
What questions do you still have?
Do you still have any questions about how to build horizontal forms with the Gravity Forms plugin in WordPress? We’d love to know what they are. Unfortunately, we are not able to provide custom styling assistance.
Did this resource help you do something awesome with Gravity Forms? Then you'll absolutely love Gravity Perks; a suite of 33+ essential add-ons for Gravity Forms with support you can count on.
Hi –
Any thoughts on how to make validation errors (like required field needs to be entered) not mess up the formatting of horizontal forms?
Thanks!
Hi Chris,
This is possible with custom CSS but will differ per theme and form. With Gravity Form 2.5 you will be able to setup the fields as blocks which will make it even easier.
Please some one to help me ? Sub-Label Placement not appear…How could I inlude it ?
Hi Aimé,
If you have a Gravity Perks license, drop us a line in Support and we’ll be happy to dig into this for you.
Applied one of the codes mentioned above and now at least the field and button are aligned and centered.
(Green newsletter signup form at) https://www.alettahelena.com
Now, I would like to have fields and button using the entire available space.
Any suggestion would be honestly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
Hello Rudd, Thank you for writing in. I do see that your page has gf_simple_horizontal set for the form but I do not see gf_inline set for each inline item. Also, it looks like you may want to edit your CSS files to center the form as a whole. Here is a tutorial from Gravity Forms on how to do that.
Hi, I’m getting some strange behaviour with this one. I apply the css classes as described. It then “hides” my email field label and reduces the size of the email field box.
any thoughts on why that would be and how to rectify?
Thanks, Stuart
It’s not working for me either, maybe GF have changed something on the CSS side that is causing issues with this?
Label placement must be Top aligned in form settings/form layout (step 1).
Hey Jason, Excellent question. This seems to be a default interaction with gf_simple_horizontal. This only works with the “top label” form layout option. When added to “CSS Class Name” in your form settings will create a very simple horizontal form layout (think simple email address field and inline form button). The field label is hidden so using the placeholder option for the field is recommended. Please note that this works best on very simple, single-input field types. Also, it works best if you set the input size to “large” in the field settings. Let us know if you have any other questions.😀
Is it possible to do this for mobile? Obviously wouldn’t make sense with a lot of fields, but we have 1 field and a “send” button.
I would expect this to work in mobile now. Do you have an example of what you’ve implemented with this so far?
http://ampauto.kinsta.cloud/inventory/delray-buick-gmc-delray-beach-fl/used-2014-chevrolet-traverse-1gnkrgkd3ej187931/
In the section, “Send Seller a Message”
It doesn’t seem to work on firefox for me – everything is left justified and smaller: https://www.dropbox.com/s/uwgqem17s7hznje/Screenshot%202019-11-15%2023.10.28.png?dl=0 Looks like this on Safari and Chrome: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ctxdf2kcetls8yz/Screenshot%202019-11-15%2023.11.14.png?dl=0
Any advice for mozilla? thank you!
Do you have a URL where I could view this form?
Hi Annette, thanks for reaching out to us via Gravity Perks support. I wanted to follow up here for the benefit of other folks having this issue.
The difference in styling between Chrome and Firefox was due to some existing CSS in the site’s theme. If you run into this, you can simply add this to your theme’s style sheet to force the form to 100% width in both browsers:
http://snippi.com/s/13yiw81
Is there a way to just make the submit button inline with the very last field?
Like I want my whole form to be three lines. The first two lines would each have two questions, the last line would have one question then the Submit button.
This is possible with custom CSS but will differ per theme and form.
Thanks for this tutorial.
I’m trying to add the form to a newsletter template that came with my theme. When I added the “gf_simple_horizontal” and “gf_inline” appropriately, the email field became smaller.
Is there a way to increase the length of the email field (it’s in large already)?
Hi Chris, the form-level classes override some of the styles on the form elements. You would need to use CSS to set a desired width on your Email field.
How can I accomplish the same look for a multi-page form so that the next button would be in place of the submit button with same inline style?
We don’t have a solution for this one.
Thank you. Works perfectly.
What would be the CSS to centralize this?
Come again?
Naturally the form appears to be aligned to the left. Is there a container or ready class to centralise this?
I’m looking to do this too.
I think I’m still misunderstanding? The “gf_simple_horizontal_wrapper” is the class to use to centralize this behavior.
I’m having the same issue, I have have the gf_simple_horizontal set with gf_inline on all 3 input fields and the form is left justified left rather than center.
https://termitetiger.com/test/
I’m using Divi theme.
Any clue why it is left rather than center justified?
Hi Brian, this is the default behavior of the gf_simple_horizontal ready class. You would need additional custom CSS to center it.
I centered it by adding the following code:
http://snippi.com/s/zm5l5o5
Thanks for sharing, JaxRachel!
Fantastic Tip. Works perfectly. TY!
how do you change the size of the fields for horizontal forms? I want only an email field with a button. The field size never changes. I tried selecting “small”, “medium” and “large”
Looks like Gravity Forms doesn’t support this in this context. You would need to use CSS to set the sizes manually.
Do you have anything in your kit to add a modal box helper at the end of a field title for the person completing the form, much in the same way that the admin panel has them with the ‘?’ and when you hover additional explanation comes up. As some fields only display conditionally it needs to be in with the form title. I don’t want to swamp the form with extensive text in the description field that is offered. Thanks
Hi Ed, sounds like you’re looking for tooltips? This is a great plugin for that: https://github.com/norcross/gravity-tooltips
Do you know if there’s a way to make only part of form horizontal?
Two or three fields can be placed on the same line with the “thirds” or “halves” style options — but not the submit button. So I have, for instance, some HTML fields I want above, and then a name, address, and submit button below that I’d like to be in a line. I can get the name and address on the same line, but I can’t seem to control the placement of the submit button.
(Also, your readers should be aware that under normal circumstances, hiding the field labels and relying on placeholder text alone is bad practice. Screen readers, etc. used for accessibility purposes won’t read the placeholder; they need the label.)
Thanks, Rachel, I thought we had a mention in here about accessibility but it was actually on this other article.
In regards to your question, I do not know of a ready solution for making only part of the form horizontal outside of the ready classes you already mentioned. You’d have to write some custom CSS to wrangle the submit button into it’s desired location.
Well, drat. I was hoping there might be an easy way. This CSS newbie is struggling with all the CSS wrangling to get a decent-looking form. .lol
Thank you!
Line 17 is missing a :
Fixed. Thanks, David!
Hi, I tried gf_simple_horizontal with just an email field. But the field does not resize–it stays at small whether I select large or medium.
Any suggestions? Thx!
Hi Makil, the gf_simple_horizontal class overrides some of GF’s other styles, including the size setting. You can manually override the width for any input by adding a custom style to your theme’s stylesheet:
input#input_1418_1 { width: 500px; }
Where “1418” is your own form ID and the “1” is your field ID. Template: input#input_FORMID_FIELDID
I would like to Create 4 column table in Gravity form can you provide me the code
Local Guardian (If Any): S.No Name Relationship Address (w/ tel. no.)
Form & output should be like Table
Sorry, Faith. We’re not able to provide bespoke code pro bono.