Tagged “cssgrid”

There’s a great section on Source order and layers in Every Layout’s Imposter layout. It’s a reminder that when needing to layer one element on top of the other you should:

1. favour a modern layout approach such as CSS Grid over absolute positioning; and
2. not apply z-index unless it’s necessary.

which elements appear over which is, by default, a question of source order. That is: if two elements share the same space, the one that appears above the other will be the one that comes last in the source.

z-index is only necessary where you want to layer positioned elements irrespective of their source order. It’s another kind of override, and should be avoided wherever possible.

An arms race of escalating z-index values is often cited as one of those irritating but necessary things you have to deal with using CSS. I rarely have z-index problems, because I rarely use positioning, and I’m mindful of source order when I do.

A while back I bookmarked Michelle Barker’s CSS Grid based overlay technique which neatly allows layering one element atop another using CSS Grid rather than absolute positioning. Now, Stephanie Eckles has taken the idea a step further with her Smol Stack Layout which offers a more flexible markup structure, some intuitive grid area naming and a neat aspect-ratio API.

When considering using Flexbox or CSS Grid to change the visual order of elements, remember that “with great power comes great responsibility”.

Need to overlay one HTML element on top of and fully covering another, such as a heading with translucent background on top of an image? Michelle Barker has us covered with this blog post in which she creates an overlay utility to handle this. She firstly shows how it can be accomplished with positioning, then modernises her code using the inset CSS logical property, before finally demonstrating a neat CSS Grid based approach.

In web development it’s useful when we can say “if the browser supports X, then we know it also supports Y”.

While bookmarking the mastery.games article yesterday, I started getting the feeling that something was awfully familiar. It was! I’ve seen this layout before – from Tyler Sticka back in 2017 to be precise – but failed to bookmark it at the time.

Very clever responsive <article> layout (with gutters and breakout images) achieved using CSS Grid, minmax(), the ch unit and a minimum of fuss. It scales automatically from narrow to wide viewports with no auto margins, max-width or media query manual overrides in sight.

For the blog post page (the page you're looking at right now) I wanted a mobile-friendly layout where the text was centered and readable, where the images/code examples are wide.

Some serious CSS Grid positioning, image manipulation and alpha transparency ninjitsu on display here from Stephanie Eckles!

This episode explores creating website heroes - aka “headers” - with one of my favorite ways to use CSS grid layout: by turning it into a canvas.

Modern CSS Solutions for Old CSS Problems

I first got into web design/development in the late 90s, and only as I type this sentence do I realize how long ago that was. Here’s a history of CSS and web design, as I remember it.

Subgrid for CSS Grid Layout has arrived in Firefox and it looks great. Here’s how I wrapped my head around the new concepts.

Every now and then something comes along in the world of web design that represents a substantial shift. The launch of Every Layout, a new project from Heydon Pickering and Andy Bell, feels like one such moment.

Evan Minto notes that flexible grids created with CSS Grid’s repeat, auto-fill, and minmax are only intrinsically responsive (responsive to their container rather than the viewport) up to a point, because when the container width is narrower than the minimum width specified in minmax the grid children overflow.

Some simple but inspiring work here from Seattle-based web developer Katherine Kato. I really like the use of space, the typography, the colour palette and the use of CSS grid for layout.

I realised last night while watching a presentation by Lea Verou that I could streamline my CSS Grid layouts.

Great resource from CSS Grid expert Rachel Andrew, with the Patterns and Examples sections which provide quick-start grid layouts being particularly handy.

Léonie Watson explains how the HTML tabindex attribute is used to manage keyboard focus. Of particular interest to me was a clarification of what tabindex="-1" does (because I always forget).