Lin gives a deep dive into Firefox’s new CSS engine specifically, but this is also an excellent primer on how browsers handle CSS in general: parsing, styling, layout, painting, compositing, and rendering.
Oh, how I wish I could’ve been at Web Directions Code in Melbourne to see this amazing presentation by Charlotte. I can’t quite get over how many amazing knowledge bombs she managed to drop in just 20 minutes!
Rachel is maintaining this (short) list of browser bugs with CSS Grid, inspired by the excellent Flexbugs.
Grid shipped into browsers](https://gridbyexample.com/browsers) in a highly interoperable state, however there are a few issues - let’s document any we find here.
A great example of progressive enhancement in action.
You can perfectly use CSS grid layout today if you don’t expect exactly the same appearance in every single browser, which isn’t possible to achieve nowadays anyway. I’m well aware that this decision isn’t always up to us developers, but I believe that our clients are willing to accept those differences if they understand the benefits (future-proof design, better accessibility and better performance). On top of that, I believe that our clients and users have — thanks to responsive design — already learned that websites don’t look the same in every device and browser.
Rachel uncovers a great phrase for dealing with older browsers:
It isn’t your fault, but it is your problem.
She points to multiple ways of using CSS Grid today while still providing a decent experience for older browsers.
Crucially, there’s one message that hasn’t changed in fifteen years:
Websites do not need to look the same in every browser.
It’s crazy that there are still designers and developers who haven’t internalised this. And before anyone starts claiming that the problem is with the clients and the bosses, Rachel has plenty of advice for talking with them too.
Your job is to learn about new things, and advise your client or your boss in the best way to achieve their business goals through your use of the available technology. You can only do that if you have learned about the new things. You can then advise them which compromises are worth making.
Bram hopes for a way to define aspect ratios natively in CSS. We can sort of manage it now, but all the solutions are pretty hacky.
A great description of one of the most powerful features in CSS Grid.
This function opens the door to us being able to write much more powerful and succinct CSS by allowing us to set, as a value for a grid track, a function including both a minimum and maximum value.
Charlotte has caught the CSS Grid bug. I absolutely love her step-by-step explanation—it’s really clear, and manages to be brief but thorough at the same time.
It’s time to be more experimental and push the boundaries with layouts.
A quick visual guide to CSS Grid properties and values.
This is a really clear explanation of how CSS works.
A handy GUI for experimenting with CSS Grid Layout without having to recall the syntax.
Here’s a handy interface if you want to get your head around named areas in CSS Grid, also known as doing layout with ASCII art.
I’ve been digging into CSS Grid a lot during the past week, so this post from Eric is very timely. On the surface it looks like a fairly simple use case but as you read through the explanation, it starts to become clear that the underlying thinking could be used in a lot of situations.
And, yes, like Eric, I too have been bitten by the Grid bug:
I’m working on my first redesign in a dozen years. If that doesn’t give you some sense of the power of Grid, well, I just don’t know what will.
Chris rounds up the discussion that’s been happening around container queries, for and against.
Personally, I’d like to see about 100 different use cases fleshed out. If it turns out some of them can be done sans container queries, awesome, but it still seems highly likely to me that having container queries available to us would be mighty handy.
Its the sequel to Flexbox Froggy—this time it’s grid!
I’m a sucker for CSS gamification.
Paul’s being contrary again.
Seriously though, this is a good well-reasoned post about why container queries might not be the the all-healing solution for our responsive design problems. Thing is, I don’t think container queries are trying to be an all-encompassing solution, but rather a very useful solution for one particular class of problem.
So I don’t really see container queries competing with, say, grid layout (any more than grid layout is competing with flexbox), but rather one more tool that would be really useful to have in our arsenal.
A really inspiring post by Jen outlining all the benefits of the new CSS layout features …and the problems with thinking framework-first.
I know a lot of people will think the “best” way to use CSS Grid will be to download the new version of Bootstrap (version 5! now with Grid!), or to use any one of a number of CSS Grid layout frameworks that people are inevitably going to make later this year (despite Rachel Andrew and I begging everyone not to). But I don’t. The more I use CSS Grid, the more convinced I am that there is no benefit to be had by adding a layer of abstraction over it. CSS Grid is the layout framework. Baked right into the browser.
Unsurprisingly, I completely and utterly agree with Ethan’s assessment here:
I’ve written some code that’s saying, “Once the screen is this size and the element appears in a different, smaller container, use a narrower layout on this element.”
But, well, that’s weird. Why can’t we apply styles based on the space available to the module we’re designing, rather than looking at the shape of the viewport?
I also share his frustration with the “math is hard; let’s go shopping” response from browser vendors:
There’s an incredible clamor for container queries, with folks from every corner of the responsive community asking for something that solves this problem. So personally, I’d love to see at least one browser vendor partner with the RICG, and get properly fired up about this.
We had to drag browser makers kicking and screaming to responsive images (to this day, Hixie maintains it’s not a problem that needs solving) and I suspect even more activism is going to be needed to get them to tackle container queries.
A nice rundown of some of the fun you can have with viewport units.
I’m very glad the problems with vh units I wrote about a little while back is getting fixed in Chrome for mobile.
Grid is only a replacement for float-based layout, where float-based layout it being used to try and create a two-dimensional grid. If you want to wrap text around an image, I’d suggest floating it.
Grid is only a replacement for flexbox if you have been trying to make flexbox into a two-dimensional grid. If you want to take a bunch of items and space them out evenly in a single row, use flexbox.