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New layouts with CSS Subgrid
- Nathanba 10mo agoIsn't this also what container queries solve better? I guess maybe you want to be sure that the whole grid remains consistent instead of relying on individual containers possibly making their own decisions. So many new features to investigate, so little time :) https://codepen.io/web-dot-dev/pen/rNrbPQw https://codepen.io/web-dot-dev/pen/rNrbPQw
- webstrand 10mo agoContainer queries don't solve the responsive to sibling sizes issue that grid/flex can solve. And frustratingly container queries force your container element to be a new stacking context, unlike flex/grid. I am sad that using containers and subgrids together doesn't work. Being able to query the size of the subgrid from a child element would be super powerful.
- webstrand 10mo agoSubgrid is really cool, but I want to note that for the first trivial example, you could make the children participate in grid layout by doing ul { display: contents } it's more efficient, if you don't need subgrid features, but still want the nested element structure for other reasons.
- Izkata 10mo agoAnd on the second one, you could use any other unit instead of fr for the image to set its width consistently, then fr on the text to have it use up whatever remains.
- bradly 10mo agoI also wasn't understanding the value looking at the first two examples, but the pricing packages example I do think I would struggle to implement in a clean way using traditional css.
- b2ccb2 10mo agoI'd use <table>. It literally is a table. And for mobile just do a media query to turn it into a flexbox.
- PxldLtd 10mo agoYeah the claim that tables are hard to style for such a simple design doesn't really hold up in my opinion. This took two seconds to make https://codesandbox.io/p/sandbox/5ry4rl https://codesandbox.io/p/sandbox/5ry4rl I do agree though that subgrid makes the HTML more readable though so I'm all for it.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- moron4hire 10mo agoYes, for that specific example it works. But in general, this essentially deletes the UL from the layout entirely. It won't be stylable[0] and it won't dispatch UI events that occur on it specifically. One example of a reason you might want such an element to still participate in layout is to use that element as an area highlighter. Or you might make it a scrollable section; subgrid makes sticky-header tables rather trivial to implement now. [0] Well, I can't remember right now if it's unstylable or if its height just ends up zero, but either way, it might not be what you expect.
- masterphai 10mo agoOne subtle thing worth adding is that display: contents also changes how accessibility trees are constructed. The element is removed from the visual layout and from the accessibility tree in many browsers, so semantics like list grouping, landmarks, or ARIA roles can disappear unless you re-introduce them manually. That’s why subgrid ends up filling a different niche: you preserve the DOM structure, preserve accessibility semantics, and still let the children participate in the parent’s track sizing. It costs more than contents, but it avoids a lot of the accidental side-effects that show up once you start mixing layout, semantics, and interactivity.
- paulhebert 10mo agoYeah this is a good callout. My understanding is that display: contents is not meant to impact the accessibility tree but there is a long and ongoing history of browser bugs that make me not want to use it for elements that have an accessible role
- webstrand 10mo agoFrom my testing, as far as I've been able to tell it no longer has any impact on accessibility. The element itself does not appear in the tree, this makes sense display:contents is non-interactive. But all of the children correctly appear in the accessibility tree as if they did not have that shared parent element. But I am by no means an expert at operating screen readers, do you know of any specific issues with it?
- t1234s 10mo agois grid intended to replace flex at some point or live side by side
- SquareWheel 10mo agoThey're complimentary. As a general (though not exclusive) rule, consider flex for one-dimensional layouts, and grids for two-dimensional layouts.
- psygn89 10mo agoYeah, to expand on that... Flex is, well, flexible, whereas Grid is more rigid like a table. The rigidity of Grid allows you to span rows and columns (2D) just like you can with table cells (colspan/rowspan). Grid is usually used at a macro level for its more deterministic layout (no unintuitive flex quirks), while flex is usually used to lay things out at a component level where you don't care that the next row of items isn't perfectly aligned with the ones above (you will often see it hold some buttons or badges, or vertically align text to an icon), and Grid setting the layout of the app and container components (modals, cards, etc).
- taftster 10mo agoSo is Grid supposed to be what we should use to replace the html <table> element? That I still use to this day for layouts because CSS still sucks to me?
- psygn89 10mo agoUse <table> for tabular data, but for layout you should use grid. Grid doesn't have it's own element like table does, so you have to use css to apply that display to a div. CSS takes a bit of time to understand. It's cascading nature and how certain properties behave differently based on the html structure or display type or direction makes it tricky. I don't blame you sticking with tables for layouts for yourself - making layouts with floats was a pain. Bootstrap hid a lot of the layout pain. But today we have flex and grid to help us realize our layouts.
- echelon 10mo agoI am continually in awe of Josh's blog posts, clarity of writing, sense of design, and fun interactive website. You're killing it, Josh. Thank you for writing and teaching us.
- paulhebert 10mo agoAgreed. I’m happy to be on his mailing list. I’m always excited for a new Josh article
- kumarvvr 10mo agoHow is this different to, and better than using nested grids?
- psolidgold 10mo agoThis is addressed in the article. This really shines when you have sibling dependent layouts.
- laszlokorte 10mo agoIf you nest two grids, the rows and columns of two sibling grids are not forced two align. With subgrid the rows and columns of two sibling grids are aligned with each other by glueing them to the rows and columns of the parent grid.
- N_Lens 10mo agoHave we wrapped all the way around to <table> layouts again?
- hackthemack 10mo agoI agree. I got really tired of hearing tables are for tabular data! For 20+ years. My reply was always, Who cares if it accomplished the layout you want. If the meaning of a word is what got people so hung up... why not go and make a new css term that did what tables did but improve on it. Now 20+ years later, that is pretty much what they did.
- strixli 10mo agoScreen readers do care. A lot. Grid and subgrid solve the problem without breaking DOM and semantics, which is a huge concern in accessibility.
- sussmannbaka 10mo agoYes and no. <table> layouts were a hack that solved a real problem but came with massive downsides. People didn’t tell you to not use <table> to lay out content because grids are bad (they are quite handy! take a look at Grid Systems by Josef Müller-Brockmann) but because <table> both posed technical and accessibility problems. A layout grid is not a table (or a <table >). A table (with and without <>) comes with attached semantics, hierarchy, reading direction etc. and is extremely rigid, which makes it a bad fit for differing screen sizes. It’s true that this was a blind spot for a long time and that it was frustrating to not be able to efficiently lay out content in 2D when <table> was just there. But it was the wrong choice then as it is now and it has been baseline available for 8 years now. I hope it won’t take another 8 years until the comparison stops :o)
- lelandfe 10mo ago> A layout grid is not a table Ain't it? Rows and columns get you a table.
- lofaszvanitt 10mo agoWhen I see the grid syntax, I just wanna jump off a cliff. Who created this abomination and why? We need trials to check whether these were the output of humans or some synthetics pretending to be humans.
- hexasquid 10mo agoIt's quite straightforward to find the discussions that lead to the specs, if you're interested in participating.
- lofaszvanitt 10mo agoSo it went thru multiple people and they all said in unison: well, this is all ironed out, easy to use and looks ok. We did a great job! Just mind boggling. I get it, maybe they want to create extra jobs, by adding complexity, hence more people are required for a role, but why keeping up the illusion? Fucking alter the economic systems if this was the goal.
- alwillis 10mo agoYes, the syntax takes a while to get used to; they were attempting to cover several different use cases. You can use ASCII art to “draw” your layout if you want to, which is quite accessible [1]. [1]: “Grid: how grid-template-areas offer a visual solution for your code” — https://webkit.org/blog/17620/grid-how-grid-template-areas-offer-a-visual-solution-for-your-code/ https://webkit.org/blog/17620/grid-how-grid-template-areas-o...
- alwillis 10mo agoLayout Land [1] is a great set of videos that explains CSS Grid [1]: https://m.youtube.com/layoutland https://m.youtube.com/layoutland
- lofaszvanitt 10mo agoWhy does it need explaining, when it has to be self explaining and not some overcomplicated mishmash. Like someone was under the influence of psychedelics when working out the specifics. We had to wait 15 years for proper positioning in css. Same shit repeated again.
- rckt 10mo agoI never found it comfortable to work with grids. The syntax and layout just feel off. Flexbox is a much more flexible and easy thing to work with.
- code_biologist 10mo agoThere's plenty of overlap, but they solve different problems: flexbox when the content should control element sizing/fit, grid when the container should control element sizing/fit.
- alwillis 10mo agoAnother way to think about it: flexbox is for alignment of boxes in one dimension: horizontally or vertically. CSS Grid is for two dimensional layout of rows and columns. Back in the day, developers wanted page layout instead of the hacks on top of hacks with table-based layouts, floats and positioning to create layouts. We’ve had CSS Grid designed for page layout on the web, in all browsers since 2017; as of 2022, only 12% of the top 1 million websites used CSS Grid, which to me is ridiculously low.
- rckt 10mo agoI use flexbox for grid purposes, simply because the syntax is straightforward and easy to read. Yeah, it’s one dimension, but if you nest it, it becomes two with no issues.
- laszlokorte 10mo agoWith nested flexbox the nested dimensions are not aligned to each other. With grid the items are aligned across both each row AND each column. With subgrid even nested grids can be aligned across nesting levels.
- rckt 10mo agoTrue. But so far I haven't faced layouts that I could not implement using flexbox.
- flowerthoughts 10mo agoThis sounds useful, but the example of the feature rows reminds me how sad it is that CSS sometimes requires adding information about the document structure to make a layout work. In this case the number of rows.
- dsego 10mo agoIdeally, we would have a way to align elements even when they don't share a parent. Or maybe a flex container that can have its layout mimic another flex container so the distribution in them can line up. It seems that there are a lot of heuristics and edge cases though to keep a simple DX.
- Surac 10mo agoSo we are back to grids after all the years put into css? We had this with html many years ago
- buovjaga 10mo agoRandom grid gotcha that drove me crazy some time ago: due to browser bugs we can't use <img> elements with percentage widths or heights as grid items. The grid cell dimensions get blown out to the ones of the original image. Seen in both Firefox and Chromium. Relevant FF bug is probably https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1857365 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1857365 '<img> grid item with percentage height, "width: auto", "grid-template-columns: auto", and no track stretching makes column to have the same width of the original image's width' (although someone there claims it works in Chromium).
- bryanrasmussen 10mo agoso if the img has a specific size set in width and height attributes or via css, and that size is not percentile or auto, the problem doesn't exist? I'm just confused by the "original image's width".
- chrisweekly 10mo agonot OP but (unless silently edited) they wrote > "<img> elements with percentage widths or heights"
- buovjaga 10mo agoThe Firefox bug report has an image that illustrates the issue: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1857365#c0 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1857365#c0
- scotty79 10mo agoHave we reached the point where we can fully simulate quirks mode table behavior?
- hollowturtle 10mo agoFrom the example: .grid { display: grid; grid-template-columns: 35% 1fr 1fr 1fr; } .grid header { grid-row: 1 / 3; } .grid ul { grid-row: span 2; grid-column: span 3; display: grid; grid-template-rows: subgrid; grid-template-columns: subgrid; } I swear you that I had less hard time reading x86 assembly code or even c++ templates. I mean what the hell? Then if you go look at another example: > @media (max-width: 32rem) I know what rem means, I just don't know what the hell MAY mean, that alone in a big project will make you hate your job as sometimes it's more easier predicting what the response of an LLM may be than what styling an element will have on a live page [Edit] I'm not confusing rem with em, em are even worse, but still hard predicting what a rem might be, before arguing we shouldn't I'd like to stress out we should once it's used like that "@media (max-width: 32rem)" [Edit2] Instead of just downvoting why don't you reply with your counter arguments? I really am interested in hearing what you have to say
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- joestrouth1 10mo agoPut me on a C++/asm project and I'd have a hard time making heads or tails of it. So what? Your comment comes off as very angry without any meaningful critique of the article's central topic other than you had a hard time understanding it. 1rem is equal to the same number of pixels anywhere on a given page and, generally speaking, across pages on a given site. If you don't know what the value is it only takes a minute to find out. If you're writing CSS that'll be used on unknown pages, you either a) shouldn't care and just scale relative to whatever root font size the consumer set or b) should set your own size/scale, at build time or with custom properties. REMs have been around and standard practice for 10 years.
- hollowturtle 10mo ago> 1rem is equal to the same number of pixels anywhere on a given page and, generally speaking, across pages on a given site. That's not true, first of all the root font size might not be immediate to query and find out what it is, second it might change because of variables on the root or base font size might be percentage/rem based itself not necessarily in pixels and finally setting it in pixels doesn't take into consideration zoom levels, or OS-level font settings. > REMs have been around and standard practice for 10 years. I know but thanks for flexing it out, in fact I'm arguing that css is and has been bad for many years
- HenriTEL 10mo agoAh yes, a new css concept! I love this kind of article that invariably contains this kind of statement: > This is mind-bending stuff, but it becomes intuitive with a bit of practice. The problem is not the language, it's just that you did not spend enough time to learn it the proper way.
- dsego 10mo agoThe pricing UI example is exactly the type of thing I had to build a few years ago. Deceptively simple, two tables for comparison, but the rows need to line up. Impossible without subgrid, either you need to have fixed heights or calculate heights with JS, but neither is elegant or simple, especially if you have react components and adhere to modular design, and you need to have those components agree on sizing.
- kafkaesque 10mo agoAm I the only one who sees "content boxes"/divs with content displayed in different widths as poor design? At least in the example given, I would think you would want the image and its associated content box to be the same size for all four and not have its content vary in width based on how much content it has. But in terms of functionality, I'm sure there are plenty applications for this!
- herpdyderp 10mo agoWhy do you put styles in the code playground HTML and CSS file? I was staring at the first subgrid example’s CSS file for ages trying to figure how anything special was applied to the ul element.
- ambigious7777 10mo agoit's because the CSS file is for styles not important to the example
- another_twist 10mo agoSounds like a source of bugs. Basically this means the grids can be nested to no end. It breaks locality in that now I have to understand what the parent would do before I can make sense of a component.