Container queries can’t be used in the sizes attribute for responsive images. Here, Jason breaks down why that is (spoiler: it’s the lookahead pre-parser) and segues into a truly long term solution: a “magical” image format.
If you’ve ever thought it felt weird to put media conditions inside the HTML for responsive images, this will resonate.
Instead of thinking about responsive design in terms of media queries, I like to think of responsive design in these categories.
- Responsive to the content
- Responsive to the viewport
- Responsive to the container
- Responsive to the user preferences
I feel like we need a name for this era, when CSS started getting real good.
I think this is what I’ve been calling declarative design.
The algorithm I’m going after is pretty simple: If the grid of items has an odd number of items, then make the first item full-width. But CSS can’t do logic… right? Well… hold my proverbial beer.
Some thoughts on CSS, media queries, and fluid type prompted by Utopia:
We say CSS is “declarative”, but the more and more I write breakpoints to accommodate all the different ways a design can change across the viewport spectrum, the more I feel like I’m writing imperative code. At what quantity does a set of declarative rules begin to look like imperative instructions?
In contrast, one of the principles of Utopia is to be declarative and “describe what is to be done rather than command how to do it”. This approach declares a set of rules such that you could pick any viewport width and, using a formula, derive what the type size and spacing would be at that size.
It’s said that the best way to learn about something is to teach it. I certainly found that to be true when I was writing the web.dev course on responsive design.
I felt fairly confident about some of the topics, but I felt somewhat out of my depth when it came to some of the newer modern additions to browsers. The last few modules in particular were unexplored areas for me, with topics like screen configurations and media features. I learned a lot about those topics by writing about them.
Best of all, I got to put my new-found knowledge to use! Here’s how…
The Session is a progressive web app. If you add it to the home screen of your mobile device, then when you launch the site by tapping on its icon, it behaves just like a native app.
In the web app manifest file for The Session, the display-mode property is set to “standalone.” That means it will launch without any browser chrome: no address bar and no back button. It’s up to me to provide the functionality that the browser usually takes care of.
So I added a back button in the navigation interface. It only appears on small screens.
Do you see the assumption I made?
I figured that the back button was most necessary in the situation where the site had been added to the home screen. That only happens on mobile devices, right?
Nope. If you’re using Chrome or Edge on a desktop device, you will be actively encourged to “install” The Session. If you do that, then just as on mobile, the site will behave like a standalone native app and launch without any browser chrome.
So desktop users who install the progressive web app don’t get any back button (because in my CSS I declare that the back button in the interface should only appear on small screens).
I was alerted to this issue on The Session:
It downloaded for me but there’s a bug, Jeremy - there doesn’t seem to be a way to go back.
Luckily, this happened as I was writing the module on media features. I knew exactly how to solve this problem because now I knew about the existence of the display-mode media feature. It allows you to write media queries that match the possible values of display-mode in a web app manifest:
.goback {
display: none;
}
@media (display-mode: standalone) {
.goback {
display: inline;
}
}
Now the back button shows up if you “install” The Session, regardless of whether that’s on mobile or desktop.
Previously I made the mistake of inferring whether or not to show the back button based on screen size. But the display-mode media feature allowed me to test the actual condition I cared about: is this user navigating in standalone mode?
If I hadn’t been writing about media features, I don’t think I would’ve been able to solve the problem. It’s a really good feeling when you’ve just learned something new, and then you immediately find exactly the right use case for it!
The final five are here! The course on responsive design I wrote for web.dev is now complete, just in time for Christmas. The five new modules are:
These five felt quite “big picture”, and often quite future-facing. I certainly learned a lot researching proposals for potential media features and foldable screens. That felt like a fitting way to close out the course, bookending it nicely with the history of responsive design in the introduction.
And with that, the full course is now online. Go forth and learn responsive design!
I knew that custom properties don’t work in media queries but I had no idea that there was such a thing as custom media queries, which effectively do the same thing.
But this is not implemented in any browser. Boo! This would be so useful! If browser makers can overcame the technical hurdles with container queries, I’m sure they can deliver custom media queries.
I think Bruce is onto something here:
It seems to me that browsers could do more to protect their users. Browsers are, after all, user agents that protect the visitor from pop-ups, malicious sites, autoplaying videos and other denizens of the underworld. They should also protect users against nausea and migraines, regardless of whether the developer thought to (or had the tools available to).
So, I propose that browsers should never respect
scroll-behavior: smooth;if a user prefers reduced motion, regardless of whether a developer has set the media query.
The point of this post is to show how nicely container queries can play with web components, but I want to also point out how nice the design of the web component is here: instead of just using an empty custom element, Max uses progressive enhancement to elevate the markup within the custom element.
Huh. I don’t think I ever thought about nesting media queries …and yet I’m pleasantly surprised that it works!
Removing
mediasupport from HTML video was a mistake.
Damn right! It was basically Hixie throwing a strop, trying to sabotage responsive images. Considering how hard it is usually to remove a shipped feature from browsers, it’s bizarre that a good working feature was pulled out of production.
I like the way that Simon is liberating his data from silos and making it work for him.
Container queries are like buses: you’re waiting for ages and then two come along at once.
This switch() syntax looks interesting.
Hell has frozen over! Container queries might actually happen!
Matthias has a good solution for dealing with the behaviour of CSS custom properties I wrote about: first set your custom properties with the fallback and then use feature queries (@supports) to override those values.
2010 was quite a year:
And exactly three weeks after Jeremy Keith’s HTML5 For Web Designers was first published, “Responsive Web Design” went live in A List Apart.
Nothing’s been quite the same since.
I remember being at that An Event Apart in Seattle where Ethan first unveiled the phrase and marvelling at how well everything just clicked into place, perfectly capturing the zeitgeist. I was in. 100%.
It’s now easier than ever to style form controls without sacrificing semantics and accessibility:
The reason is that we can finally style the ::before and ::after pseudo-elements on the
<input>tag itself. This means we can keep and style an<input>and won’t need any extra elements. Before, we had to rely on the likes of an extra<div>or<span>, to pull off a custom design.
The demo is really nice. And best of all, you can wrap all of these CSS enhancements in a feaure query:
Hopefully, you’re seeing how nice it is to create custom form styles these days. It requires less markup, thanks to pseudo-elements that are directly on form inputs. It requires less fancy style switching, thanks to custom properties. And it has pretty darn good browser support, thanks to
@supports.
Everyone wants it, but it sure seems like no one is actively working on it.
Zach traces the earliest inklings of container queries to an old blog post of Andy’s—back when he was at Clearleft—called Responsive Containers:
For fun, here’s some made-up syntax (which Jeremy has dubbed ‘selector queries’)…
Lynn gives a step-by-step walkthrough of the latest amazing redesign of her website. There’s so much joy and craft in here, with real attention to detail—I love it!