5 ms·

Does anyone have any real-world examples of GSS? I like the idea, but I'm struggling to imagine what this would look like in an actual system. Maybe I'm nuts

Does anyone have any real-world examples of GSS? I like the idea, but I'm struggling to imagine what this would look like in an actual system. Maybe I'm nuts but I don't feel constrained by CSS too often. Everything I need, I get from CSS + a decent preprocessor (usually LESS these days). Maybe this is a symptom of using CSS, but I rarely even encounter people describing layouts in the way GSS appears to want me to code them. I don't have much experience with constraint-based layout systems in general, but from what I read it looks like it's a common practice when developing native solutions. This gives me the impression that systems like GSS are just "CSS for people who are used to building native apps and don't grok CSS". I don't mean to say that CSS isn't without more than it's fair share of flaws, but I take issue with the statement that doing laying out views on the web is in any way difficult.

themodelplumber 12y ago
There is an article about this in the most recent net Magazine issue. The example given made sense but was just edge-casey enough that I came away thinking that normal CSS was probably good enough for me. Plus GSS usage seemed like a bear given the minor advantages.
kenferry 12y ago
> I rarely even encounter people describing layouts in the way GSS appears to want me to code them. I don't think that's the case… think of how when you're dragging elements around in Keynote or Powerpoint, how you get guidelines that snap in relationships between elements. This is centered in that, these things have the same width, the space between these two things is 10, the left edges of these things align. Those relationships are what's expressed. When someone is designing a layout, those are the terms they're going to be thinking in.
- notduncansmith 12y ago
  You're right, for some reason this wasn't apparent to me when I was reading about it. Thanks for pointing that out.
state 12y ago
I spend quite a bit of time on both sides of this issue: both doing design work and implementing it. The appeal of GSS definitely lies in how similar it is to how I conceive of layouts functioning. As a designer I want the grid to be based on divisions of the page, and every piece of software I work on appears in many different "page" sizes depending on the device, resolution, &c. It's not just that I want my grid fields to proportionally resize themselves, but that the elements themselves need to reorganize themselves to suit different grid conditions. All of that is really just to say that I also want to see answers to your first question. GSS seems like a reasonably good way to think about this, but I want to see more examples of it in the wild, esp. in production.
mtdewcmu 12y ago
>>Everything I need, I get from CSS + a decent preprocessor (usually LESS these days). Maybe this is a symptom of using CSS, but I rarely even encounter people describing layouts in the way GSS appears to want me to code them. I'm not sure how you could possibly know whether or not CSS is good enough without knowing what else may be possible. It sounds like you work with CSS professionally, so it isn't going to bother you if something takes an hour -- that's a perfectly good, billable hour. Supposedly, people in the past did not know that horses are slow. For my part, I hate CSS. I can't quite imagine what this new system will be like, but it's wonderful to think that progress may be coming.
- wmeredith 12y ago
  I totally hear what you're saying abut the horse analogy: I don't know what I don't know. What I DO know is that as an interaction designer working with CSS for about 8 years, I can say with some personal conviction that CSS is NOT my bottleneck when it comes to building great software. It has limitations and quirks, like anything else that is reality-based, but it's REALLY powerful for layout in terms of variety and depth of interaction. Add SASS or LESS to your workflow and CSS becomes the bee's knee's so to speak with all the power of functions, variables, arrays, etc... Everything can be improved, I suppose. However, I've seen poor knowledge of programming concepts in business leadership or toxic office politics dash months of work in an instant. As opposed to fiddly fluid layout issues in CSS. Which any skilled coder can do away with in a few minutes.
  - lomnakkus 12y ago
    CSS is fundamentally broken -- it lacks a property which is pretty basic to all systems, namely abstraction. I think Paul Chiusano put it way better than I could: http://pchiusano.github.io/2014-07-02/css-is-unnecessary.html http://pchiusano.github.io/2014-07-02/css-is-unnecessary.htm...
    - notduncansmith 12y ago
      Try using a preprocessor.
ryanwhitney 12y ago
The homepage does a better job of explaining it—minus the syntax-shock to those accustomed to CSS—with examples like this: http://cl.ly/image/3U02110W2w22 http://cl.ly/image/3U02110W2w22 http://gridstylesheets.org/ http://gridstylesheets.org/

themodelplumber 12y ago

There is an article about this in the most recent net Magazine issue. The example given made sense but was just edge-casey enough that I came away thinking that normal CSS was probably good enough for me. Plus GSS usage seemed like a bear given the minor advantages.

kenferry 12y ago

> I rarely even encounter people describing layouts in the way GSS appears to want me to code them. I don't think that's the case… think of how when you're dragging elements around in Keynote or Powerpoint, how you get guidelines that snap in relationships between elements. This is centered in that, these things have the same width, the space between these two things is 10, the left edges of these things align. Those relationships are what's expressed. When someone is designing a layout, those are the terms they're going to be thinking in.

notduncansmith 12y ago
You're right, for some reason this wasn't apparent to me when I was reading about it. Thanks for pointing that out.

state 12y ago

I spend quite a bit of time on both sides of this issue: both doing design work and implementing it. The appeal of GSS definitely lies in how similar it is to how I conceive of layouts functioning. As a designer I want the grid to be based on divisions of the page, and every piece of software I work on appears in many different "page" sizes depending on the device, resolution, &c. It's not just that I want my grid fields to proportionally resize themselves, but that the elements themselves need to reorganize themselves to suit different grid conditions. All of that is really just to say that I also want to see answers to your first question. GSS seems like a reasonably good way to think about this, but I want to see more examples of it in the wild, esp. in production.

mtdewcmu 12y ago

>>Everything I need, I get from CSS + a decent preprocessor (usually LESS these days). Maybe this is a symptom of using CSS, but I rarely even encounter people describing layouts in the way GSS appears to want me to code them. I'm not sure how you could possibly know whether or not CSS is good enough without knowing what else may be possible. It sounds like you work with CSS professionally, so it isn't going to bother you if something takes an hour -- that's a perfectly good, billable hour. Supposedly, people in the past did not know that horses are slow. For my part, I hate CSS. I can't quite imagine what this new system will be like, but it's wonderful to think that progress may be coming.

wmeredith 12y ago
I totally hear what you're saying abut the horse analogy: I don't know what I don't know. What I DO know is that as an interaction designer working with CSS for about 8 years, I can say with some personal conviction that CSS is NOT my bottleneck when it comes to building great software. It has limitations and quirks, like anything else that is reality-based, but it's REALLY powerful for layout in terms of variety and depth of interaction. Add SASS or LESS to your workflow and CSS becomes the bee's knee's so to speak with all the power of functions, variables, arrays, etc... Everything can be improved, I suppose. However, I've seen poor knowledge of programming concepts in business leadership or toxic office politics dash months of work in an instant. As opposed to fiddly fluid layout issues in CSS. Which any skilled coder can do away with in a few minutes.
- lomnakkus 12y ago
  CSS is fundamentally broken -- it lacks a property which is pretty basic to all systems, namely abstraction. I think Paul Chiusano put it way better than I could: http://pchiusano.github.io/2014-07-02/css-is-unnecessary.html http://pchiusano.github.io/2014-07-02/css-is-unnecessary.htm...
  - notduncansmith 12y ago
    Try using a preprocessor.

ryanwhitney 12y ago

The homepage does a better job of explaining it—minus the syntax-shock to those accustomed to CSS—with examples like this: http://cl.ly/image/3U02110W2w22 http://cl.ly/image/3U02110W2w22 http://gridstylesheets.org/ http://gridstylesheets.org/