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Using Grid Named Areas to Visualize (and Reference) Your Layout

Whenever we build simple or complex layouts using CSS Grid, we’re usually positioning items with line numbers. Grid layouts contain grid lines that are automatically indexed with positive and negative line numbers (that is unless we explicitly name them). Positioning items with line numbers is a fine way to lay things out, though CSS Grid has numerous ways to accomplish the same with an undersized cognitive encumbrance. One of those ways is something I like to think of as the “ASCII” method.

The ASCII method in a nutshell

The method boils down to using grid-template-areas to position grid items using custom-named areas at the grid container level rather than line numbers.

When we declare an element as a grid container using display: grid, the grid container, by default, generates a single-column track and rows that sufficiently hold the grid items. The container’s child elements that participate in the grid layout are converted to grid items, irrespective of their display property.

For instance, let’s create a grid by explicitly defining columns and rows using the grid-template-columns and grid-template-rows properties.

.grid {
  display: grid;
  grid-template-columns: 1fr 1fr;
  grid-template-rows: repeat(3, 200px);
}

This little snippet of CSS creates a 3×2 grid where the grid items take up equal space in the columns, and where the grid contains three rows with a track size of 200px.

We can define the entire layout with named grid areas using the grid-template-areas property. According to the spec, the initial value of grid-template-areas is none.

grid-template-areas = none | <string>+

<string>+ is listing the group of strings enclosed with a quote. Each string is represented as a cell, and each quoted string is represented as a row. Like this:

grid-template-areas: "head head" "nav main" "foot foot";

The value of grid-template-areas describes the layout as having four grid areas. They are,

  • head
  • nav
  • main
  • foot

head and foot span two column tracks and one row track. The remaining nav and main each span one column track and one row track. The value of grid-template-areas is a lot like arranging ASCII characters, and as Chris suggested a while back, we can get a visualization of the overall structure of the layout from the CSS itself which is the most trouble-free way to understand it.

(Full size GIF)

OK, so we created our layout with four named grid areas: head, nav, main, foot.

Now, let’s start to position the grid items against named grid areas instead of line numbers. Specifically, let’s place a header element into the named grid area head and specify the named grid area head in the header element using the grid-area property.

Named grid areas in a grid layout are called idents. So, what we just did was create a custom ident named head that we can use to place items into certain grid tracks.

header { grid-area: head; }

We can other HTML elements using other custom idents:

nav { grid-area: nav; }
main { grid-area: main; }
footer { grid-area: foot; }

Writing named area values

According to CSS Grid Layout Module Level 1, all strings must be defined under the following tokens:

  • Named cell token: This represents the named grid area in the grid. For instance, head is a named cell token.
  • Null cell token: This represents the unnamed grid area in the grid container. For instance, an empty cell in the grid is a null cell token.
  • Trash token: This is a syntax error, such as an invalid declaration. For instance, a disparate number of cells and rows compared to the number of grid items would make a declaration invalid.

In grid-template-area, every quoted string (the rows) must have the same number of cells and define the complete grid without ignoring any cell.

We can ignore a cell or leave it as an empty cell using the full-stop character (.)

.grid { 
  display: grid;
  grid-template-areas:
    "head head"
    "nav main"
    "foot .";
}

If that feels visually awkward or imbalanced to you, we can use multiple full-stop characters without any whitespaces separating them:

.grid {
  display: grid;
  grid-template-areas:
    "head head"
    "nav main"
    "foot ....";
}

A named cell token can span multiple grid cells, But those cells must form a rectangular layout. In other words, we’re unable to create “L” or “T”-shaped layouts, although the spec does hint at support for non-rectangular layouts with disconnected regions in the future.

ASCII is better than line-based placement

Line-based placement is where we use the grid-column and grid-row properties to position an element on the grid using grid line numbers that are automatically indexed by a number:

.grid-item {
  grid-column: 1 / 3; /* start at grid column line 1 and span to line 3 */
}

But grid item line numbers can change if our layout changes at a breakpoint. In those cases, it’s not like we can rely on the same line numbers we used at a specific breakpoint. This is where it takes extra cognitive encumbrance to understand the code.

That’s why I think an ASCII-based approach works best. We can redefine the layout for each breakpoint using grid-template-areas within the grid container, which offers a convenient visual for how the layout will look directly in the CSS — it’s like self-documented code!

.grid {
  grid-template-areas:
    "head head"
    "nav main"
    "foot ...."; /* much easier way to see the grid! */
}

.grid-item {
  grid-area: foot; /* much easier to place the item! */
}

We can actually see a grid’s line numbers and grid areas in DevTools. In Firefox, for example, go to the Layout panel. Then, under the Grid tab, locate the “Grid display settings” and enable the “Display line number” and “Display area names” options.

Enabling grid settings.

This ASCII approach using named areas requires a lot less effort to visualize and easily find the placement of elements.

Line-based placement versus ASCII Art placement.

Let’s look at the “universal” use case

Whenever I see a tutorial on named grid areas, the common example is generally some layout pattern containing header, main, sidebar, and footer areas. I like to think of this as the “universal” use case since it casts such a wide net.

The Holy Grail layout in rectangles.

It’s a great example to illustrate how grid-template-areas works, but a real-life implementation usually involves media queries set to change the layout at certain viewport widths. Rather than having to re-declare grid-area on each grid item at each breakpoint to re-position everything, we can use grid-template-areas to “respond” to the breakpoint instead — and get a nice visual of the layout at each breakpoint in the process!

Before defining the layout, let’s assign an ident to each element using the grid-area property as a base style.

header {
  grid-area: head;
}

.left-side {
  grid-area: left;
}

main {
  grid-area: main;
}

.right-side {
  grid-area: right;
}

footer {
  grid-area: foot;
}

Now, let’s define the layout again as a base style. We’re going with a mobile-first approach so that things will stack by default:

.grid-container {
  display: grid;
  grid-template-areas:
    "head"
    "left"
    "main"
    "right"
    "foot";
}

Each grid item is auto-sized in this configuration — which seems a little bit weird — so we can set min-height: 100vh on the grid container to give us more room to work with:

.grid-container {
  display: grid;
  grid-template-areas:
    "head"
    "left"
    "main"
    "right"
    "foot";
  min-height: 100vh;
}

Now let’s say we want the main element to sit to the right of the stacked left and right sidebars when we get to a slightly wider viewport width. We re-declare grid-template-areas with an updated ASCII layout to get that:

@media (min-width: 800px) {
  .parent {
    grid-template-columns: 0.5fr 1fr;
    grid-template-rows: 100px 1fr 1fr 100px;
    grid-template-areas:
      "head head"
      "left main"
      "right main"
      "foot foot";
  }
}

I tossed some column and row sizing in there purely for aesthetics.

As the browser gets even wider, we may want to change the layout again, so that main is sandwiched between the left and right sidebars. Let’s write the layout visually!

.grid-container {
  grid-template-columns: 200px 1fr 200px; /* again, just for sizing */
  grid-template-areas:
    "head head head"
    "left main right"
    "left main right"
    "foot foot foot";
}

Leveraging implicit line names for flexibility

According to the spec, grid-template-areas automatically generates names for the grid lines created by named grid areas. We call these implicitly-named grid lines because they are named for us for free without any additional work.

Every named grid area gets four implicitly-named grid lines, two in the column direction and two in the row direction, where -start and -end are appended to the ident. For example, a grid area named head gets head-start and head-end lines in both directions for a total of four implicitly-named grid lines.

Implicitly assigned line names.

We can use these lines to our advantage! For instance, if we want an element to overlay the main, left, and right areas of our grid. Earlier, we talked about how layouts have to be rectangular — no “T” and “L” shaped layouts allowed. Consequently, we’re unable to use the ASCII visual layout method to place the overlay. We can, however, use our implicit line names using the same grid-area property on the overlay that we use to position the other elements.

Did you know that grid-area is a shorthand property, sort of the same way that margin and padding are shorthand properties? It takes multiple values the same way, but instead of following a “clockwise” direction like, margin — which goes in order of margin-block-start, margin-inline-end, margin-block-end, and margin-inline-start — grid-area goes like this:

grid-area: block-start / inline-start / block-end / inline-end;
Showing the block and inline flow directions in a left-to-right writing mode.

But we’re talking about rows and columns, not block and inline directions, right? Well, they correspond to one another. The row axis corresponds to the block direction, and the column axis corresponds to the inline direction:

grid-area: grid-row-start / grid-column-start / grid-row-end / grid-column-end;
Block and inline axis.

Back to positioning that overlay element as a grid item in our layout. The grid-area property will be helpful to position the element using our implicitly-named grid lines:

.overlay {
  grid-area: left-start / left-start / right-end / main-end;
}

Creating a minimal grid system

When we focus on layouts like the “universal” use case we just saw, it’s tempting to think of grid areas in terms of one area per element. But it doesn’t have to work like that. We can repeat idents to reserve more space for them in the layout. We saw that when we repeated the head and foot idents in the last example:

.grid-container {
  grid-template-areas:
    "head head head"
    "left main right"
    "left main right"
    "foot foot foot";
}

Notice that main, left, and right are also repeated but in the block direction.

Let’s forget about full page layouts and use named grid areas on a component. Grid is just as good for component layouts as full pages!

Here’s a pretty standard hero component that sports a row of images followed by different blocks of text:

A row of weightlifting photos above a heading, blurb, then a row of three links.

The HTML is pretty simple:

<div class="hero">
  <div class="image">
    <img src="..." alt="" />
  </div>
  <div class="text">
    <!-- ... -->
  </div>
</div>

We could do this for a real fast stacked layout:

.hero {
  grid-template-areas:
    "image"
    "text";
}

But then we have to reach for some padding, max-width or whatever to get the text area narrower than the row of images. How about we expand our ASCII layout into a four-column grid instead by repeating our idents on both rows:

.hero {
  display: grid;
  grid-template-columns: repeat(4, 1fr); /* maintain equal sizing */
  grid-template-areas:
    "image image image image"
    "text  text  text  text";
}

Alright, now we can place our grid items into those named areas:

.hero .image {
  grid-area: image;
}

.hero .text {
  grid-area: text;
}

So far, so good — both rows take up the entire width. We can use that as our base layout for small screens.

Showing grid lines on the stacked mobile version of the page.

But maybe we want to introduce the narrower text when the viewport reaches a larger width. We can use what we know about the full-stop character to “skip” columns. Let’s have the text ident skip the first and last columns in this case.

@media (min-width: 800px) {
  main {
    grid-template-columns: repeat(6, 1fr); /* increase to six columns */
    grid-template-areas:
      "image image image image image image"
      "..... text  text  text  text  .....";
  }
}

Now we have the spacing we want:

Showing grid lines for a table-sized layout of the page.

If the layout needs additional tweaking at even larger breakpoints, we can add more columns and go from there:

.hero {
  grid-template-columns: repeat(8, 1fr);
  grid-template-areas:
    "image image image image image image image image"
    "..... text  text  text  text  text  text  .....";
}

Dev tool visualization:

Showing grid lines for a large table sized layout of the page.

Remember when 12-column and 16-column layouts were the big things in CSS frameworks? We can quickly scale up to that and maintain a nice visual ASCII layout in the code:

main {
  grid-template-columns: repeat(12, 1fr);
  grid-template-areas:
    "image image image image image image image image image image image image"
    "..... text  text  text  text  text  text  text  text  text  text  .....";
}

Let’s look at something more complex

We’ve looked at one fairly generic example and one relatively straightforward example. We can still get nice ASCII layout visualizations with more complex layouts.

Let’s work up to this:

Three images positioned around a fancy heading.

I’ve split this up into two elements in the HTML, a header and a main:

<header>
  <div class="logo"> ... </div>
  <div class="menu"> ... </div>
</header>
<main>
  <div class="image"> ... </div>
  <h2> ... </h2>
  <div class="image"> ... </div>
  <div class="image"> ... </div>
</main>

I think flexbox is more appropriate for the header since we can space its child elements out easily that way. So, no grid there:

header {
  display: flex;
  justify-content: space-between;
  /* etc. */
}

But grid is well-suited for the main element’s layout. Let’s define the layout and assign the idents to the corresponding elements that we need to position the .text and three .image elements. We’ll start with this as our baseline for small screens:

.grid {
  display: grid;
  grid-template-columns: repeat(4, 1fr);
  grid-template-areas:
    "image1 image1 .....  image2"
    "texts  texts  texts  texts"
    ".....  image3 image3 .....";
}

You can already see where we’re going with this, right? The layout is visualized for us, and we can drop the grid items into place with the custom idents:

.image:nth-child(1) {
  grid-area: image1;
}

.image:nth-last-child(2) {
  grid-area: image2;
}

.image:nth-last-child(1) {
  grid-area: image3;
}

h2 {
  grid-area: texts;
}
Showing grid lines on a mobile layout of the page.

That’s our base layout, so let’s venture into a wider breakpoint:

@media (min-width: 800px) {
  .grid {
    grid-template-columns: repeat(8, 1fr);
    grid-template-areas:
      ". image1 image1 ...... ......  ...... image2 ."
      ". texts  texts  texts  texts   texts  image2 ."
      ". .....  image3 image3 image3  image3 ...... .";
  }
}

I bet you know exactly how that will look because the layout is right there in the code!

Showing grid lines for a table-sized layout of the page.

Same deal if we decide to scale up even further:

.grid {
  grid-template-columns: repeat(12, 1fr);
  grid-template-areas:
    ". image1 image1 .....  .....   .....  .....  .....  .....  .....  .....  ."
    ". texts  texts  texts  texts   texts  texts  texts  texts  texts  image2 ."
    ". .....  image3 image3 image3  image3 .....  .....  .....  .....  .....  .";
}
Showing grid lines for a desktop-sized layout of the page.

Here’s the full demo:

I’m using the “negative margin hack” to get the first image to overlap the heading.

Wrapping up

I’m curious if anyone else is using grid-template-areas to create named areas for the benefit of having an ASCII visual of the grid layout. Having that as a reference in my CSS code has helped de-mystify some otherwise complex designs that may have been even more complex when dealing with line numbers.

But if nothing else, defining grid layouts this way teaches us some interesting things about CSS Grid that we saw throughout this post:

  • The grid-template-areas property allows us to create custom idents — or “named areas” — and use them to position grid items using the grid-area property.
  • There are three types of “tokens” that grid-template-areas accepts as values, including named cell tokens, null cell tokens, and trash cell tokens.
  • Each row that is defined in grid-template-areas needs the same number of cells. Ignoring a single cell doesn’t create a layout; it is considered a trash token.
  • We can get a visual ASCII-like diagram of the grid layout in the grid-template-areas property value by using required whitespaces between named cell tokens while defining the grid layout.
  • Make sure there is no whitespace inside a null cell token (e.g. .....). Otherwise, a single whitespace between null cell tokens creates unnecessary empty cells, resulting in an invalid layout.
  • We can redefine the layout at various breakpoints by re-positioning the grid items using grid-area, then re-declaring the layout with grid-template-areas on the grid container to update the track listing, if needed. There’s no need to touch the grid items.
  • Custom named grid areas automatically get four implicitly assigned line names — <custom-ident>-start and <custom-ident>-end in both the column and row directions.

Using Grid Named Areas to Visualize (and Reference) Your Layout originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

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Background Shift Animation with CSS Blend Modes

Some days ago I encountered the beautiful website of Alef Estate made by the amazing folks of Advanced Team. The site has so many interesting details and interactions! What strikes me the most is the changing cursor that also has a blend mode. When scrolling further down, the whole page switches to a black background with a kind of slice animation. I think this is a super interesting effect! It’s the perfect excuse to code up a portfolio design and play with mix-blend-mode and some background trickery.

If you want to learn about CSS Blend Modes, check out the entry in our CSS Reference by Sara Soueidan: mix-blend-mode. It has lots of examples and demos.

I really hope you are enjoying this effect remake and experiment and find it interesting!

The post Background Shift Animation with CSS Blend Modes appeared first on Codrops.

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How Do You Handle Component Spacing in a Design System?

Say you’ve got a <Card /> component. It’s highly likely it shouldn’t be butted right up against any other components with no spacing around it. That’s true for… pretty much every component. So, how do you handle component spacing in a design system?

Do you apply spacing using margin directly on the <Card />? Perhaps margin-block-end: 1rem; margin-inline-end: 1rem; so it pushes away from the two sides where more content natural flows? That’s a little presumptuous. Perhaps the cards are children inside a <Grid /> component and the grid applies a gap: 1rem. That’s awkward, as now the <Card /> component spacing is going to conflict with the <Grid /> component spacing, which is very likely not what you want, not to mention the amount of space is hard coded.

Example of a component spacing where a card component is to the left of an accordion component and above an article, with 50 pixels of spacing between all three elements. Lorem i-sum text throughout in a mono font. The card has a Calvin and Hobbes comic image.
Adding space to the inline start and block end of a card component.

Different perspectives on component spacing

Eric Bailey got into this recently and looked at some options:

  • You could bake spacing into every component and try to be as clever as you can about it. (But that’s pretty limiting.)
  • You could pass in component spacing, like <Card space="xxl" />. (That can be a good approach, likely needs more than one prop, maybe even one for each direction, which is quite verbose.)
  • You could use no component spacing and create something like a <Spacer /> or <Layout /> component specifically for spacing between components. (It breaks up the job of components nicely, but can also be verbose and add unnecessary DOM weight.)

This conversation has a wide spectrum of viewpoints, some as extreme as Max Stoiber saying just never use margin ever at all. That’s a little dogmatic for me, but I like that it’s trying to rethink things. I do like the idea of taking the job of spacing and layout away from components themselves — like, for example, those content components should completely not care where they are used and let layout happen a level up from them.

Adam Argyle predicted a few years back that the use of margin in CSS would decline as the use of gap rises. He’s probably going to end up right about this, especially now that flexbox has gap and that developers have an appetite these dats to use CSS Flexbox and Grid on nearly everything at both a macro and micro level.

How Do You Handle Component Spacing in a Design System? originally published on CSS-Tricks. You should get the newsletter and become a supporter.

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Grid Zoom Layout

Today I’d like to share a simple grid concept with you. The idea is to “zoom” or scale up a small grid image and show some more content (i.e. a project slideshow that is not implemented) and a small map that shows a miniature version of the whole image grid so that it becomes easy to navigate.

Combined with some text animations that we’ve previously explored in Layout with Reveal Animations and Content Preview, the whole design comes to life. We are using the same code as in the other demo.

The initially view looks as follows:

When clicking on a grid image, we animate it to the right side of the screen and scale it up.

And this is how it all comes together:

I hope you enjoy this little experiment and find it useful!

Thank you for checking by 🙂

The post Grid Zoom Layout appeared first on Codrops.

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Slideshow with Filter Reveal Effect

I’d like to share a very simple, little effect with you. It’s just an idea for applying a filter effect on a slideshow when navigating between the images. This is really just a proof of concept, I haven’t made a second level interaction, so no content preview or such thing.

So I hope you enjoy just navigating between the slides and find some inspiration in this. The whole thing suffers from classitis, there’s lots of better ways to do this!

Thanks for checking by!

The post Slideshow with Filter Reveal Effect appeared first on Codrops.

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Kinetic Typography Page Transition

The other day I was drooling over HOLOGRAPHIK’s amazing kinetic typography animations. Especially this one caught my eye. There’s a very interesting (very short) part where some words are being rotated and zoomed in, and I couldn’t help but think of a page transitions that somehow incorporates that idea.

So I went ahead and tried it on a simple layout to see how it could work. Turns out it’s a lot of fun and there’s so many possibilities for making this look and feel right for a specific design.

The initial screen has some items:

Once we click on an item, the typography page transition happens. The faded background letters starts to rotate and become more visible and finally, they move out, revealing the next screen:

Here’s the whole animation (the color is actually a bit off in the video):

I really hope you enjoy this one and find it inspirational! Let me know what you think on Twitter @codrops or @crnacura! Thank you for checking by!

The post Kinetic Typography Page Transition appeared first on Codrops.

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Layout with Reveal Animations and Content Preview

Today I’d like to share a little experiment with you that has some fancy animations for a menu and a content preview. I love to play with the overflow-hidden trick that we can use to make elements disappear and show again (by being cut off). We call this form of hiding an element reveal effect on Codrops and we’ve played with it here, for example.

The idea is to show/hide lines of text fluidly and repeat this animation pattern throughout the design:

Note that this is just an animation proof-of-concept and not a properly made template!

I really hope you like this little experiment and find it inspiring!

The post Layout with Reveal Animations and Content Preview appeared first on Codrops.

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Hexagons and Beyond: Flexible, Responsive Grid Patterns, Sans Media Queries

A little while back, Chris shared this nice hexagonal grid. And true to its name, it’s using —wait for it — CSS Grid to form that layout. It’s a neat trick! Combining grid columns, grid gaps, and creative clipping churns out the final result.

A similar thing could be accomplished with flexbox, too. But I’m here to resurrect our old friend float to create the same sort of complex and responsive layout — but with less complexity and without a single media query.

I know, it’s hard to believe. So let’s start with a working demo:

This is a fully responsive hexagon grid made without media queries, JavaScript, or a ton of hacky CSS. Resize the demo screen and see the magic. In addition to being responsive, the grid also scales. For example, we can chuck more hexagons in there by adding more divs, and control both the sizing and spacing using CSS variables.

Cool, right? And this is only one example among many grids we will build in the same manner.

Making a grid of hexagons

First, we create our hexagon shape. This task is fairly easy using clip-path. We will consider a variable S that will define the dimension of our element. Bennett Feely’s Clippy is a great online generator for clip paths.

Creating a hexagonal shape using clip-path

Each hexagon is an inline-block element. The markup can go something like this:

<div class="main">
  <div class="container">
    <div></div>
    <div></div>
    <div></div>
    <!--etc. -->
  </div>
</div>

…and the CSS:

.main {
  display: flex; /* we will talk about this later ... */
  --s: 100px;  /* size  */
  --m: 4px;   /* margin */
}

.container {
  font-size: 0; /* disable white space between inline block element */
}

.container div {
  width: var(--s);
  margin: var(--m);
  height: calc(var(--s) * 1.1547);
  display: inline-block;
  font-size: initial; /* we reset the font-size if we want to add some content */
  clip-path: polygon(0% 25%, 0% 75%, 50% 100%, 100% 75%, 100% 25%, 50% 0%);
}

Nothing complex so far. We have a main element that holds a container which, in turn, holds the hexagons. Since we are dealing with inline-block, we need to fight the common white space issue (using the font-size trick) and we consider some margin (defined with the variable M) to control the space.

Toggling the font-size of the first demo to illustrate the white space issue

Here’s the result so far:

Every other row needs some negative offset so the rows overlap rather than stack directly on top of each other. That offset will be equal to 25% of the element height (see Figure 1). We apply that offset to margin-bottom to get the following:

.container div {
  width: var(--s);
  margin: var(--m);
  height: calc(var(--s) * 1.1547);
  display: inline-block;
  font-size: initial;
  clip-path: polygon(0% 25%, 0% 75%, 50% 100%, 100% 75%, 100% 25%, 50% 0%);
  margin-bottom: calc(var(--m) - var(--s) * 0.2886); /* some negative margin to create overlap */
}

…and the result becomes:

Now the real trick is how we can shift the second row to get a perfect hexagon grid. We’ve already scrunched things to the point where the rows overlap each other vertically, but what we need is to push every other row toward the right so the hexagons stagger rather than overlap. Here’s where float and shape-outside come into play.

Did you wonder why we have a .main element wrapping our container and having display: flex ? That div is also a part of the trick. In a previous article, I used float and I needed that flexbox container in order to be able to use height: 100%. I will be doing the same thing here.

.container::before {
  content: "";
  width: calc(var(--s)/2 + var(--m));
  float: left;
  height: 100%;
}

I am using the container::before pseudo-element to create a float element that take up all the height at the left of the grid, and that has a width equal to half a hexagon (plus its margin). We get the following result:

The yellow area is our.container::before pseudo-element.

Now, we can reach for shape-outside. Let’s take a quick refresher on what it does. Robin defines it nicely in the CSS-Tricks Almanac. MDN describes it nicely as well:

The shape-outside CSS property defines a shape—which may be non-rectangular—around which adjacent inline content should wrap. By default, inline content wraps around its margin box; shape-outside provides a way to customize this wrapping, making it possible to wrap text around complex objects rather than simple boxes.

Emphasis mine

Notice “inline content” in the definition. This explains exactly why the hexagons need to be inline-block elements. But to understand what kind of shape we need, let’s zoom into the pattern.

What’s cool about shape-inside is that it actually works with gradients. But what kind of gradient fits our situation?

If, for example, we have 10 rows of hexagons, we only need to shift means every even row. Seen differently, we need to shift every second row so we need a kind of repetition — perfect for a repeating gradient!

We’ll create a gradient with two colors:

  • A transparent one to create the “free space” while allowing the first row to stay in place (illustrated by the blue arrow above).
  • An opaque color to shift the second row to the right so the hexagons aren’t directly stacked on top of one another (illustrated by the green arrow).

Our shape-outside value will look like this:

shape-outside: repeating-linear-gradient(#0000 0 A, #000 0 B); /* #0000 = transparent */

Now, let’s find the value of A and B. B will simply be equal to the height of two rows since our logic need to repeat each two rows.

The height of two rows is equal to the height of two hexagons (including their margins), minus twice the overlap (2*Height + 4*M - 2*Height*25% = 1.5*Height + 4*M ). Or, expressed in CSS with calc():

calc(1.732 * var(--s) + 4 * var(--m))

That’s a lot! So, let’s hold all of this in a CSS custom property, F.

The value of A (defined by the blue arrow in the previous figure) needs to be at least equal to the size of one hexagon, but it can also be bigger. In order to push the second row over to the right, we need few pixel of opaque color so A can simply be equal to B - Xpx, where X is a small value.

We end up with something like this:

shape-outside: repeating-linear-gradient(#0000 0 calc(var(--f) - 3px),#000 0 var(--f));

And the following result:

shape-outside is applied to the floated element, creating a floated area with a predating linear gradient.

See that? Our repeating linear gradient’s shape is pushing every other row to the right by one half the width of a hexagon to offset the pattern.

Let’s put that all together:

.main {
  display:flex;
  --s: 100px;  /* size  */
  --m: 4px;    /* margin */
  --f: calc(var(--s) * 1.732 + 4 * var(--m) - 1px); 
}

.container {
  font-size: 0; /* disable white space between inline block element */
}

.container div {
  width: var(--s);
  margin: var(--m);
  height: calc(var(--s) * 1.1547);
  display: inline-block;
  font-size:initial;
  clip-path: polygon(0% 25%, 0% 75%, 50% 100%, 100% 75%, 100% 25%, 50% 0%);
  margin-bottom: calc(var(--m) - var(--s) * 0.2885);
}

.container::before {
  content: "";
  width: calc(var(--s) / 2 + var(--m));
  float: left;
  height: 120%; 
  shape-outside: repeating-linear-gradient(#0000 0 calc(var(--f) - 3px), #000 0 var(--f));
}

That’s it! With no more than 15 CSS declarations, we have a responsive grid that fit nicely into all the screen sizes and we can easily adjust things by simply controling two variables.

You may have noticed that I am adding -1px to the variable F. Since we are dealing with calculation that involve decimals, the rounding may give us bad results. To avoid this we add or remove few pixels. I am also using 120% instead of 100% for the height of the floated element for similar reasons. There is no particular logic with theses values; we simply adjust them to make sure to cover most of the cases without any misaligning our shapes.

Want more shapes?

We can do more than hexagons with this approach! Let’s create a “rhombus” grid instead. Again, we start with our clip-path to create the shape:

Rhombus shape using clip-path

The code is basically the same. What’s changing are the calculations and values. Find below a table that will illustrate the changes.

Hexagon gridRhombus grid
heightcalc(var(--s)*1.1547)var(--s)
clip-pathpolygon(0% 25%, 0% 75%, 50% 100%, 100% 75%, 100% 25%, 50% 0%)polygon(50% 0, 100% 50%, 50% 100%, 0 50%)
margin-bottomcalc(var(--m) - var(--s)*0.2885)calc(var(--m) - var(--s)*0.5)
--fcalc(var(--s)*1.7324 + 4*var(--m))calc(var(--s) + 4*var(--m))

And we’re done! A mere four changes to our code gets us a completely new grid but with a different shape.

Just how flexible is this?

We saw how we were able to make the hexagon and rhombus grids using the exact same code structure, but different variables. Let me blow your mind with another idea: What about making that calculation a variable so that we can easily switch between different grids without changing the code? We can certainly do that!

We’ll use an octagonal shape because it’s more of a generic shape from that we can use to create other shapes (a hexagon, a rhombus, a rectangle, etc.) simply by changing a few values.

The points on this octagon shape are defined in the clip-path property.

Our octagon is defined with four variables:

  • S: the width.
  • R: the ratio that will help us defines the height based on the width.
  • hc and vc : both of these will control our clip-path values and the shape we want to get. hc will be based on the width while vc on the height

I know it looks hefty, but the clip-path is defined using eight points (like shown in the figure). Adding some CSS variables, we get this:

clip-path: polygon(
   var(--hc) 0, calc(100% - var(--hc)) 0, /* 2 points at the top */
   100% var(--vc),100% calc(100% - var(--vc)), /* 2 points at the right */
   calc(100% - var(--hc)) 100%, var(--hc) 100%, /* 2 points at the bottom */
   0 calc(100% - var(--vc)),0 var(--vc) /* 2 points at the left */
);

This is what we’re aiming for:

Let’s zoom in to identify the different values:

The overlap between each row (illustrated by the red arrow) can be expressed using the vc variable which gives us a margin-bottom equal to M - vc (where M is our margin).

In addition to the margin we applied between our element, we also need an additional horizontal margin (illustrated by the yellow arrow) equal to S - 2*hc. Let’s define another variable for the horizontal margin (MH) that is equal to M + (S - 2*hc)/2.

The height of two rows is equal to twice the size of a shape (plus the margin), minus twice the overlap, or 2*(S + 2*M) - 2*vc.

Let’s update our table of values to see how we’re calculating things between the different grids:

Hexagon gridRhombus gridOctagon grid
heightcalc(var(--s)*1.1547)var(--s)calc(var(--s)*var(--r)))
clip-pathpolygon(0% 25%, 0% 75%, 50% 100%, 100% 75%, 100% 25%, 50% 0%)polygon(50% 0, 100% 50%, 50% 100%, 0 50%)polygon(var(--hc) 0, calc(100% - var(--hc)) 0,100% var(--vc),100% calc(100% - var(--vc)), calc(100% - var(--hc)) 100%,var(--hc) 100%,0 calc(100% - var(--vc)),0 var(--vc))
--mh––calc(var(--m) + (var(--s) - 2*var(--hc))/2)
marginvar(--m)var(--m)var(--m) var(--mh)
margin-bottomcalc(var(--m) - var(--s)*0.2885)calc(var(--m) - var(--s)*0.5)calc(var(--m) - var(--vc))
--fcalc(var(--s)*1.7324 + 4*var(--m))calc(var(--s) + 4*var(--m))calc(2*var(--s) + 4*var(--m) - 2*var(--vc))

Alright, let’s update our CSS with those adjustments:

.main {
  display: flex;
  --s: 100px;  /* size  */
  --r: 1; /* ratio */

  /* clip-path parameter */
  --hc: 20px; 
  --vc: 30px;

  --m: 4px; /* vertical margin */
  --mh: calc(var(--m) + (var(--s) - 2*var(--hc))/2); /* horizontal margin */
  --f: calc(2*var(--s) + 4*var(--m) - 2*var(--vc) - 2px);
}

.container {
  font-size: 0; /* disable white space between inline block element */
}

.container div {
  width: var(--s);
  margin: var(--m) var(--mh);
  height: calc(var(--s)*var(--r));
  display: inline-block;
  font-size: initial;
  clip-path: polygon( ... );
  margin-bottom: calc(var(--m) - var(--vc));
}

.container::before {
  content: "";
  width: calc(var(--s)/2 + var(--mh));
  float: left;
  height: 120%; 
  shape-outside: repeating-linear-gradient(#0000 0 calc(var(--f) - 3px),#000 0 var(--f));
}

As we can see, the code structure is the same. We simply added more variable to control the shape and extend the margin property.

And below a working example. Adjust the different variables to control the shape while having a fully responsive grid:

An interactive demo, you say? You bet!

To make things easier, I am expressing the vc and hc as percetange of the width and height so we can easily scale our elements without breaking the clip-path

From the above we can easily get the initial hexagonal grid:

The rhombus grid:

And yet another hexagon grid:

A masonry-like grid:

And a checkerboard while we are at it:

A lot of possibilities to create a responsive grid with any kind of shape! All we have to do is adjust few variables.

Fixing the alignment

Let’s try to control the alignment of our shapes. Since we are dealing with inline-block elements, we’re dealing with default left alignment and some empty space at the end, depending on viewport width.

Notice that we alternate between two kind of grids based on the screen width:

Grid #1: A different number of items per row (N, N-1,N, N-1, etc.)
Grid #2: The same number of items per row (N, N, N, N, etc.)

It would be good to always have one of the grid all the time (either #1 or #2) and center everything so that the free space is equally divided on both sides.

In order to get the first grid in the figure above, the container width needs to be a multiplier of the size of one shape, plus its margin, or N*(S + 2*MH), where N is an integer value.

This may sound impossible with CSS, but it’s indeed possible. I made it using CSS grid:

.main {
  display: grid;
  grid-template-columns: repeat(auto-fit, calc(var(--s) + 2*var(--mh)));
  justify-content: center;
}

.container {
  grid-column: 1/-1;
}

.main is now a grid container. Using grid-template-columns, I define the column width (as previously explained) and use the auto-fit value to get as many columns as possible into the available space. Then, the .container spans all of the grid columns using 1/-1 — which means that the width of our container will be a mutiplier of one column size.

All it takes to center things is justify-content: center.

Yes, CSS is magic!

Resize the demo and notice that not only do we have the first grid from the figure, but everything is perfectly centered as well.

But wait, we removed display: flex and swapped in display: grid… so how is the percentage-based height of the float still working? I had said that using a flex container was the key for that, no?

Well, turns out CSS grid sports that feature too. From the specification:

Once the size of each grid area is thus established, the grid items are laid out into their respective containing blocks. The grid area’s width and height are considered definite for this purpose.


Note: Since formulas calculated using only definite sizes, such as the stretch fit formula, are also definite, the size of a grid item which is stretched is also considered definite.

A grid item has a stretch alignment by default, so its height is definite, meaning using a percentage as a height inside it is perfectly valid.

Let’s say we instead want the second grid in the figure — we simply add an extra column with a width equal to half the width of the other columns:

.main {
  display: grid;
  grid-template-columns: repeat(auto-fit,calc(var(--s) + 2*var(--mh))) calc(var(--s)/2 + var(--mh));
  justify-content :center;
}

Now, in addition to a fully responsive grid that is flexible enough to take custom shapes, everything is perfectly centred!

Fighting the overflow

The use of negative margin-bottom on the last items and the float element pushing our items will create some unwanted overflow that may affect the content placed after our grid.

If you resize the demo, you will notice an overflow equal to the negative offset and sometimes it’s bigger. The fix is to add some padding-bottom to our container. I will make the padding equal to the height of one shape:

I have to admit that there isn’t a perfect solution to fight that overflow and to control the space below our grid. That space depends on a lot of factors and we may have to use a different padding value for each case. The safest solution is to consider a big value that covers most of the cases.

Wait, one more: a pyramidal grid

Let’s take everything we’ve learned and build another amazing grid. This time, we’ll transform the grid we just made into a pyramidal one.

Consider that, unlike the grid we’ve made so far, the number of elements is important especially for the responsive part. It’s required to know the number of elements and more precesily the number of rows.

Different pyramidal grid based on the number of items

It doesn’t mean we need a bunch of hardcoded values; rather we use an extra variable to adjust things based on the number of rows.

The logic is based on the number of rows because different numbers of elements may give us the same number of rows. For example, there are five rows when we have between 11 and 15 elements, even if the last row is not fully occupied. Having between 16 and 21 elements gives us six rows, and so on. The number of rows is our new variable.

Before digging into the geometry and the math here is a working demo:

Notice that most of the code is the same as what we’ve done in the previous examples. So let’s focus on the new properties that we’ve added:

.main {
  --nr: 5;  /* number of rows */
}

.container {
  max-width: calc(var(--nr)*(var(--s) + 2*var(--mh)));
  margin: 0 auto;
}

.container::before ,
.container i {
  content: "";
  width: calc(50% - var(--mh) - var(--s)/2);
  float: left;
  height: calc(var(--f)*(var(--nr) - 1)/2);
  shape-outside: linear-gradient(to bottom right, #000 50%, #0000 0);
}

.container i {
  float:right;
  shape-outside: linear-gradient(to bottom left, #000 50%, #0000 0);
}

NR is our variable for the number of rows. The width of the container needs to be equal to the last row of the pyramid to make sure it hold all the elements. If you check the previous figure, you’ll see that the number of the items contained in the last row is simply equal to the number of rows, which means the formula is: NR* (S + 2*MH).

You may have also noticed that we also added an <i> element in there. We did that because we need two floating elements where we will apply shape-outside.

To understand why we need two floating elements let’s see what is done behind the scenes:

A pyramid grid of octagon shapes. The octagons alternate between green and red. There are 5 rows of octagons.
Pyramidal grid

The blue elements are our floating elements. Each one is having a width equal to half the container size, minus half a shape size, plus margin. The height is equal to four rows in our case, and to NR - 1 in a more generic case. Earlier, we defined the height of two rows, F, so the height of one row is F/2. That’s how we landed at height: calc(var(--f)*(var(--nr) - 1)/2.

Now that we have the size of our elements, we need to apply a gradient to our shape-outside.

The purple coloration in the figure above is the restricted area for our elements (it need to be an opaque color). The remaining area is the free space where the elements can flow (it need to be a transparent color). This can be done using a diagonal gradient:

shape-outside: linear-gradient(to bottom right, #000 50%, #0000 0);

We simply change right with left for the other floated element. You have probably noticed that this is not responsive. In fact, go ahead and adjust the viewport width of the demo and see just how unresponsive this is.

We have a couple of options to get responsive:

  1. We can fall back to the first grid when the container width is smaller than the viewport width. It’s a bit tricky to code, but it allows us to preserve the same size for our elements.
  2. We can reduce the size of our elements in order to keep the pyramidal grid. This is easier to code using the percentage-based value trick, but that could result in super tiny elements on smaller screen sizes.

Let’s go with the first solution. We like a good challenge, right?

To get the pyramidal grid, we needed two floated element. The initial grid needed just one floated element. Luckily, our structure allows us to have three floated elements without needing to add more elements to the markup, thanks to pseudo-elements. We will use container::before, i::before, i::after:

/* Same as before... */

/* The initial grid */
.container::before {
  content: "";
  width: calc(var(--s)/2 + var(--mh));
  float: left;
  height: 120%; 
  shape-outside: repeating-linear-gradient(#0000 0 calc(var(--f) - 3px),#000 0 var(--f));
}

/* The pyramidal grid */
.container i::before ,
.container i::after {
  content: "";
  width: calc(50% - var(--mh) - var(--s)/2);
  float: left;
  height: calc(var(--f)*(var(--nr) - 1)/2);
  shape-outside: linear-gradient(to bottom right,#000 50%,#0000 0);
}

.container i::after {
  float:right;
  shape-outside: linear-gradient(to bottom left,#000 50%,#0000 0);
}

Now we need a trick that lets us use either the first floated element or the other two, but not all of them at the same time. This condition should be based on the width of our container:

  • If the container width is bigger than the width of the last row, we can have our pyramid and use the floated elements inside of <i>.
  • If the container width is smaller than the width of the last row, we switch to the other grid and use the first floated element.

We can use clamp() for this! It’s sort of like a conditional function that sets a minimum and maximum range and, within that range, we provide it an “ideal” value to use between those points. This way, we can “switch” between grids using our formulas as clamped values, and still avoid using media queries.

Our code will look like this:

.main {
  /* the other variables won't change*/
  --lw: calc(var(--nr)*(var(--s) + 2*var(--mh))); /* width of last row */
}

.container {
  max-width: var(--lw);
}

/* The initial grid */
.container::before {
  width: clamp(0px, (var(--lw) - 100%)*1000, calc(var(--s)/2 + var(--mh)));
}

/* The pyramidal grid */
.container i::before,
.container i::after {
  width: clamp(0px, (100% - var(--lw) + 1px)*1000, calc(50% - var(--mh) - var(--s)/2));
}

On larger screens, the width of the container (LW) is now equal to its max-width, so 100% == LW. That means that the width of .container::before is equal to 0px (and results in this floated element becoming disabled).

For the other floating elements, we clamp the width:

width: clamp(0px, (100% - var(--lw) + 1px)*1000, calc(50% - var(--mh) - var(--s)/2));

…where the middle value ((100% - LW + 1px)*1000) is equal to (0 + 1px)*1000 = 1000px (an intentionally large, but arbitrary value). It gets clamped to calc(50% - var(--mh) - var(--s)/2). In other words, these floated elements are enabled with the correct width (the one we defined previously)

Voilà! we have a pyramidal shape on large screen.

Now, when the container width get smaller, LW is going to be greater than 100%. So, (LW - 100%) will be positive. Multiplied by a big value, it’s clamped to calc(var(--s)/2 + var(--mh)), which enables the first floated element. For the other float elements, (100% - LW + 1px) resolves to a negative value and is clamped to 0px, which disables the float elements.

Resize the below demo and see how we switch between both grids

Let’s try adding more elements:

See that? Things are scaling perfectly. Let’s toss more elements at it just for kicks:

Still great. Notice that the last row isn’t even full. Just shows that this approach covers a bunch of cases. We can also combine this with the CSS grid alignment trick we used earlier:

Do you think “float” is such a bad thing now?

Want invert the pyramid?

Like illustrated with the above figure, two changes to the previous code can invert our pyramid:

  • I change the direction of the gradient from to bottom left|right to to top left|right,
  • I add a margin-top equal to the height of one row.

And, hey, we can swap between both pyramid easily:

Isn’t this beautiful? We have a responsive pyramidal grid with custom shapes that we can easily invert and that fallback to another responsive grid on small screen while everything is perfectly centred. All this without a single media query or JavaScript, but instead using the often overlooked float property.

You will probably notice some missalignment in some particular cases. Yes, it’s again some rounding issue related to the calculation we are doing and the fact that we are trying to make this generic with the interactive demos. To rectify this, we simply adjust few values manually (epsecially the percentage of the gradient) until we get back a perfect alignment.

That’s a float wrap!

There we have it: combining float with shape-outside can help us make complex, flexible and responsive layouts — long live float!

The article ends here but this is only the beginning. I provided you with the layout and now you can easily put any content inside the divs, apply a background, shadows, animations, etc.

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Magnetic 3D Grid Interaction with Content Preview

Today I’d like to share another thumbnail to full view animation with you. This time we have an initial grid with thumbnails that move with the mouse in 3D and have a magnetic effect including a little tooltip on hover. Once clicked, all items animate out, giving way to a content preview with more details.

The grid interaction looks as follows:

Here’s how the grid to content animation looks like:

I really hope you find this useful! Thanks for visiting!

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Building a Settings Component

This is a tremendous CSS-focused tutorial from Adam Argyle. I really like the “just for gap” concept here. Grid is extremely powerful, but you don’t have to use all its abilities every time you reach for it. Here, Adam reaches for it for very light reasons like using it as an in-between border alternative as well as more generic spacing. I guess he’s putting money where his mouth is in terms of gap superseding margin!

I also really like calling out Una Kravet’s awesome name for flexible grids: RAM. Perhaps you’ve seen the flexible-number-of-columns trick with CSS grid? The bonus trick here (which I first saw from Evan Minto) is to use min(). That way, not only are large layouts covered, but even the very smallest layouts have no hard-coded minimum (like if 100% is smaller than 10ch here):

.el {
  display: grid;
  grid-template-columns: repeat(auto-fit, minmax(min(10ch, 100%), 35ch));
}

There is a ton more trickery in the blog post. The “color pops” with :focus-within is fun and clever. So much practical CSS in building something so practical! 🧡 more blog posts like this, please. Fortunately, we don’t have to wait, as Adam has other component-focused posts like this one on Tabs and this one on Sidenav.

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Preview to Full Content Page Transition

Today I’d like to share a small transition effect with you. It’s an animation for a preview item that becomes the full page with an article. This kind of animation concept is really interesting for blog/magazine layouts. It’s a bit tricky because of the page being scrollable, but managing it with some overflow properties makes it work.

The preview item consists of an image and a special rounded button that has a magnetic hover effect that makes the text transition.

Once clicked, the content appears and the circle moves up, where the main title animates in.

And this is how it all comes together:

I really hope you enjoy this and find it useful!

Thank you for checking by!

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Distributed Letters Animation Layout

A while back I stumbled upon this great Dribbble shot by Seth Eckert. I love that letter effect and so I was thinking about a layout where I could incorporate this kind of animation.

After playing around a bit, I thought that a layout that allows for opening a panel would be interesting. So here it is; a little layout with a distributed letter animation on hover. When clicking, the letters will move to their respective place in the panel and the other elements will animate in.

I really hope you like this and that it comes in handy.

Thank you for checking by!

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SmolCSS

A wonderful collection of little layout-related CSS snippets from Stephanie Eckles that serves both as a quick reference and a reminder of how straightforward and powerful CSS has become.

Random things to note!

  • The resizeable containers aren’t some JavaScript library. They are just <div>s with resize: horizontal; and overflow: auto; (although there is a nice little lib for that that displays current width output).
  • Each demo can be opened on CodePen, which is the prefill API at work.
  • CSS custom properties are tastefully sprinkled throughout in a way that makes it more understandable instead of less understandable.
  • The dark mode doesn’t go super duper dark, but fairly dark blues and purples. That’s a good reminder that dark mode isn’t gray/black mode. It remembers your setting, but does have flash-of-light-mode, which is the boss-mode problem with color preferences. I think you need server-side tech to really get it perfect.
  • The whole site is open source. Go Eleventy!

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Responsible Web Applications

Joy Heron bought a cool domain name and published an article there:

Luckily, with modern HTML and CSS, we can create responsive and accessible web apps with relative ease. In my years of doing software development, I have learned some HTML and CSS tips and tricks, and I want to present these in this post. This list is not exhaustive, but these are tried and true patterns that I frequently use in different projects.

Sure, it’s a collection of tips and tricks, but it’s a great one that covers modern best practices across HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. If someone asked me what they should read if they missed out on the last, say, three years of front-end and wanted to remind themselves of the important stuff, I’d send them this.

I like the casual use of a massive shape-outside in the header.

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Horizontal Smooth Scroll Layouts

If you use Locomotive Scroll, you might have heard about the new update that includes support for horizontal layouts. I’m a big fan of the library, so I couldn’t wait to try out some layouts and animations with the new feature.

The main concept behind these layouts is to play around with animations that feel and work well for scrolling to the sides. This includes animating images and text depending on the direction we scroll. Moving things up and down for example or skewing them can create a really interesting dynamic effect.

By using a structure of the images where an outer element has overflow: hidden and the inner one moves, we can create a cool parallaxed motion that adds depth to the whole layout.

I really hope you enjoy these experiments and find them useful 🙂 Thank you for stopping by and let me know what you create with Locomotive Scroll @crnacura.

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Inline Menu Layout with Gallery Panel

Sometimes, sh*t happens. Some days ago it was one of those days for me, you know, one of those spilling coffee on your mac day without having made a backup for a month. What was I thinking? Well, I did finish up this design but lost the link to the Dribbble shot I got inspired from, so if you are the original designer, I apologize for posting this without a reference, so please let me know, I’ll fill the credits in the demo asap.

Anyhoo, this layout is just a little play with hover animations and transitioning to a new panel with a (dummy) gallery layout. I really like the trend of squeezing and squooshing images and words slightly and making them fly in and out as it gives a special dynamic to the design.

The initial view is an “inline” style menu with a hover effect that shows an image for each item.

When we click on the menu item, all items disappear with a cut-off animation and the images from the gallery appear from below, imitating that same motion.

I hope you like this little layout and the animations!

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