Intro to CSS Grid Layout Part 5

This is intro to CSS grid layout part 5. So far we have taken a look at following topics. It is recommended to take a look if you are not familiar with css grid layout basics.

In this post, I will focus on explaining how to use grid area with area names for positioning grid items with an example. Let’s take a look it.

Example

We have a layout of multiple items. Note that the header is not spanning to the end but the last slot is empty.

HTML Code

This is the html code used for the example

<div class="challenge">
  <div class="header">Header</div>
  <div class="small-box-1">Small box</div>
  <div class="small-box-2">Small box</div>
  <div class="small-box-3">Small box</div>
  <div class="main-content">Main content</div>
  <div class="sidebar">Sidebar</div>
  <div class="footer">Footer</div>
</div>


CSS Code

We have 4 rows and 4 columns which make 16 unit areas. To use area based positioning, you need to define each unit area with an area name. You can decide the name as you prefer. As you can see, grid-template-areas property is defined with 16 names. For example, head is located at the first row and spanning from first to third column. “.” represents an empty slot. After you define the area representation, all you need to do is to specify the area name for each class. Take a look at line 21 and others.

.challenge {
  width: 1000px;
  margin: 30px auto;
  
  display: grid;
  grid-template-rows: 100px 200px 400px 100px;
  grid-template-columns: repeat(3, 1fr) 200px;
  grid-gap: 35px;
  grid-template-areas: "head head head ."
                      "small-box-1 small-box-2 small-box-3 side"
                      "main main main side"
                      "foot foot foot foot";
  
  & > * {
    background-color: orangered;
    padding: 15px;
    color: white;
    font-size: 30px;
    font-family: sans-serif;
  }
  .header {
    grid-area: head;
  }
  
  .small-box-1 { grid-area: small-box-1; }
  .small-box-2 { grid-area: small-box-2; }
  .small-box-3 { grid-area: small-box-3; }
  
  .sidebar {
    grid-area: side;
  }
  
  .main-content {
    grid-area: main;
  }
  
  .footer {
    grid-area: foot;
  }
}

It is very important to note that you have to have a complete area representation. Since you have 16 unit slots (4 rows * 4 columns), you have to have 16 area names in order to use it. It is fairly simple to use for a simple area layout. However, if you have a complex layout, it could be inconvenient to use it. i.e., 10 rows and 10 columns. In such a case, it would be better to use grid lines instead of names.

Intro to CSS Grid Layout Part 4

This is intro to CSS grid layout part 4 continuing from previous posts. This will specifically focus on how to position grid items based on the name of the grid lines. If you are not familiar with CSS grid layout, please refer to these posts here.

In the previous post, we went over how to position grid items based on their grid line numbers. However, it is often hard to read and understand the code when it’s using line numbers. To improve the readability and maintainability, we want to use names for the line numbers. Let’s take a look at them now.

Example

This is the one we are going to build using CSS grid layout.

HTML Code

<div class="challenge">
  <div class="header">Header</div>
  <div class="small-box-1">Small box</div>
  <div class="small-box-2">Small box</div>
  <div class="small-box-3">Small box</div>
  <div class="main-content">Main content</div>
  <div class="sidebar">Sidebar</div>
  <div class="footer">Footer</div>
</div>


CSS Code

.challenge {
  width: 1000px;
  margin: 30px auto;
  
  display: grid;
  grid-template-rows: [header-start] 100px [header-end box-start] 200px [box-end main-start] 400px [main-end footer-start] 100px [footer-end];
  grid-template-columns: repeat(3, [col-start] 1fr [col-end]) 200px [grid-end];
  grid-gap: 35px;
  
  & > * {
    background-color: orangered;
    padding: 15px;
    color: white;
    font-size: 30px;
    font-family: sans-serif;
  }
  .header {
    grid-column: col-start 1 / grid-end;
  }
  
  .sidebar {
    grid-column: col-end 3 / grid-end;
    grid-row: box-start / main-end;
  }
  
  .main-content {
    grid-column: col-start 1 / col-end 3;
  }
  
  .footer {
    grid-column: col-start 1 / grid-end;
  }
}

Let’s first take a look at how grid-template-rows and grid-template-columns are defined. Typically, you would just list width of each row and column and use the line number. However, in each line number position, you can have a list of names to use instead of numbers.

Name for grid-template-rows

Note that row line number 1 is before the first row which is now named header-start. Now, row line number 2 could have multiple names because it is the position where header ends but all other boxes start. That’s why we also added a name box-start at row line number 2. You can follow the similar logic for all other row numbers.

grid-template-rows: [header-start] 100px [header-end box-start] 200px [box-end main-start] 400px [main-end footer-start] 100px [footer-end];

Name for grid-template-columns

There is a difference for columns because it uses repeat with fractional units. Just putting the name before and after the repeat would be incorrect because it will not put names between those columns. We put names in the repeat keyword like this: repeat(3, [col-start] 1fr [col-end]). It means I want to put a name before and after 1fr column. In order to prevent any name conflict, CSS will automatically add numbers starting from 1.

grid-template-columns: repeat(3, [col-start] 1fr [col-end]) 200px [grid-end];

Usage

Now you can define all element classes using names instead of line numbers. I am only going to note one class as an example here. As you can see sidebar class, it is using names. Since the sidebar is the end column of the grid, it uses col-end 3 and grid-end (3 is automatically added by CSS). The row uses box-start and main-end.

.sidebar {
  grid-column: col-end 3 / grid-end;
  grid-row: box-start / main-end;
}


Conclusion

It is very simple to use names instead of line numbers when positioning grid items. And it is actually recommended practice. In the next post, I will explain how to position grid items based on grid area using names.

Intro to CSS Grid Layout Part 3

This is a continuation of intro to css grid layout articles. Please refer to previous articles for declaring grid layout and fractional units in row/column. This post will specifically focus on the positioning and spanning of the grid item. Let’s take a look at the example image and code first.

Example

HTML Code

<div class="container">
  <div class="item item--1">1: Orange</div>
  <div class="item item--2">2: Green</div>
  <div class="item item--3">3: Violet</div>
  <div class="item item--4">4: Pink</div>
  <div class="item item--5">5: Blue</div>
  <div class="item item--6">6: Brown</div>
</div>

As you see in the above image and the HTML code, each item is placed in the order of declaration which is the default positioning of the CSS grid layout. Then, you might ask a question if it’s possible to place an item to a specific location. For example, how do you place the item 1: orange to the location of 5: blue? There are CSS properties that allow you to change the position.

CSS Code

.container {
  background-color: #eee;
  width: 1000px;
  margin: 30px auto;
  
  display: grid;
  grid-template-rows: repeat(2, 150px);
  grid-template-columns: repeat(3, 1fr);
  grid-gap: 60px;
}

.item {
  padding: 20px;
  font-size: 30px;
  font-family: sans-sarif;
  color: white;
  
  &--1 {
    background-color: orangered;
    grid-row-start: 2;
    grid-row-end: 3;
    grid-column-start: 2;
    grid-column-end: 3;
    /*grid-row: 2 / 3;*/
    /*grid-column: 2 / 3;*/
  }
  
  &--2 {
    background-color: green;
  }
  
  &--3 {
    background-color: violet;    
  }
  
  &--4 {
    background-color: pink;
  }
  
  &--5 {
    background-color: blue;
  }
    
  &--6 {
    background-color: brown;
  }
}

Take a look at lines 20-23 in the CSS code. You have two choices to change the position.
1. use grid-<row/column>-<start/end>
2. use grid-<row/column> which is a short hand version

Do you remember there are row/column line numbers when you have CSS Grid? If you are not familiar with the concept, please refer to this article. Basically, there are row/column line numbers and you just need to specify row/column start/end position based on the number.

Looking at the image there are 3 row lines: start of the row grid, middle of the row grid and end of the row grid (1,2,3). There are 4 lines in the column: start of the column grid, 2 middle lines, end of the column grid. After specifying row/column start/end points you will notice that item 1 is now placed where item 5 was.

There are shorthand version of specifying row/column start/end which are commented at line 24,25. There is another shorthand version which is using grid-area but I think it is not really readable and didn’t specify here. You can take a look at the documentation for that.

What if more than one items are to be placed on the same position? Simply the last one will be rendered on top of the first one. The first item will not be shown.

What if you put multiple rows or columns in the grid-row or grid-column? It will simply span to take the specified area. Note that grid-column now has start at 2 and end at 4 which should take space from column 2 to 4.

  &--1 {
    background-color: orangered;
    grid-row: 2 / 3;
    grid-column: 2 / 4;
  }

Note that item 6 is now pushed to new row because item 1 is taking up the space. Even though we only specified 2 rows, CSS grid automatically expands to fit the items which is called implicit grid I will discuss in different post.

Another way of specifying the span is like this. Note that instead of specifying the end column in line 4, you can tell how many lines it should span in this case 2. Another special usage is putting -1 (at line 7) which means to span to the end of the columns.

  &--1 {
    background-color: orangered;
    grid-row: 2 / 3;
    grid-column: 2 / span 2;
    
    /*
    grid-column: 2 / -1;
    */
    
  }

Conclusion

We have taken a look at positioning of the grid item. In next post, I am going to explain how to name grid line numbers to improve readability.

Intro to CSS Grid Layout Part 2

This is intro to css grid layout part 2, continuing from the first post which explained basics of CSS grid layout. This post will explain fractional units which control the width of each grid item.

Example CSS Grid Layout

Example HTML Code

This is the html code used for the example images in the post.

<div class="container">
  <div class="item item--1">1: Orange</div>
  <div class="item item--2">2: Green</div>
  <div class="item item--3">3: Violet</div>
  <div class="item item--4">4: Pink</div>
  <div class="item item--5">5: Blue</div>
  <div class="item item--6">6: Brown</div>
</div>


Example CSS Code

This is the common CSS code used for the example images. I will specify more properties separately when necessary. For more explanations about rows, columns and gap properties, please take a look at the first post.

.container {
  background-color: #eee;
  width: 1000px;
  margin: 30px auto;
  
  display: grid;
  grid-template-rows: repeat(2, 150px);
  grid-template-columns: repeat(3, 200px);
  grid-gap: 30px;
}

.item {
  padding: 20px;
  font-size: 30px;
  font-family: sans-sarif;
  color: white;
  
  &--1 {
    background-color: orangered;
  }
  
  &--2 {
    background-color: green;
  }
  
  &--3 {
    background-color: violet;    
  }
  
  &--4 {
    background-color: pink;
  }
  
  &--5 {
    background-color: blue;
  }
    
  &--6 {
    background-color: brown;
  }
}


Fractional Units

We have defined a two-dimensional grid with two rows (width 150px) and three columns (width 200px). However, as you can see the left over space (gray color), the grid is not filling up the container width. Fractional units become useful to fill up the space just like flex: 1 property. Note that I only modified the necessary property for readability (you will still need the common code along with the modified one)

.container {
  grid-template-columns: repeat(2, 200px) 1fr;
}

Now, we have two columns of width 200px and the last column just grows to fill all the available space in the container.

What if you want to have all the columns grow equally instead of fixed width? You just need to specify the fr in the repeat like this.

.container {
  grid-template-columns: repeat(3, 1fr);
}

Note again that 1fr is a fraction of each available space. It means 2fr will have double size of 1fr in the container. You can also think of it as this way – the entire width will be divided into each fraction based on the specified ratio. You can use mix of %, px, or fr. For example, if you put the code as the following, the first column will have the 50% of the entire width and the rest of columns will be divided based on specified fr.

.container {
  grid-template-columns: 50% 1fr 2fr;
}

One thing to note is the gap size when using % or px. % or px do not take the gap as part of their size. They take the specified width. However, fractional units count the space after subtracting the gaps from the available space. Note the difference between the two images below – gap increase from 30px to 60px. The first column – width 50% – stays same but the width of the others decrease as gap size increased.


Conclusion

In this post, we went over fractional units which control the width of each grid item. For defining CSS grid, please take a look at the first post. In the next article, I am going to explain the positioning of each grid item.

Intro to CSS Grid Layout Part 1

This post is an intro to CSS grid layout part 1. You can use CSS Grid to easily build a two-dimensional grid-based layout. This is the first part of the article which will specifically focus on the basic properties.


CSS Grid Layout Example

The above image represents basics of CSS grid layout. It has two rows and three columns. Each brown box is called a grid item. There is a gap between the items which is called a gutter.


Grid Container

It is the container of the grid. You can declare the container by calling this in the CSS file.

.container {
    display: grid;
}


Row/Column

Row and column of the container can be specified by calling the following after display: grid

.container {
  grid-template-rows: 150px 150px;
  grid-template-columns: 150px 150px 150px;    
}

The above declares two rows and three columns. Each row/column has width of 150px. However, it is a bit inconvenient to specify all the rows and columns separately. For that you can use the keyword repeat.

.container {
  grid-template-rows: repeat(2, 150px);
  grid-template-columns: repeat(3, 150px);
}

The above code is exactly same as the first one. If you want to have different width for certain row or column, you can just specify it like this.

.container {
  grid-template-rows: repeat(2, 150px);
  grid-template-columns: repeat(2, 150px) 200px;
}

Now you have 2 rows with the same width but 3 columns of which first 2 columns have 150px and the last column has 200px.

Note the numbers around the row and column (row: 1,2,3 and column:1,2,3,4) are row lines and column lines.


Gap (gutter)

The space between each grid item. You can define the row/column gap separately or the same depending on the property.

.container {
  grid-row-gap: 30px;
  grid-column-gap: 50px;
}

The above code has 30px for row gap and 50px for column gap. Row gap is the space between two rows (there are only two rows).
Column gap is the spaces between three columns (there are only three columns)

If you would like to have the same space for all the gaps, you can use this property.

.container {
  grid-gap: 30px;
}


Conclusion

We have taken a look at very basics of CSS grid layout – declaring two-dimensional grid with rows and columns. In next post, I will go over more of CSS grid. fractional units, positioning of grid items

CSS – Intro to Flexbox Part 3

This is the continuation of CSS – intro to flexbox part 3. Previous posts explained what flexbox is and conceptual things (part 1) and flexbox container properties and examples (part 2). This post will focus on explaining the properties of flex items and examples for them. Since flex items properties are only applicable to the specified item, I posted the HTML, CSS code again for easier understanding. Please pay special attention to the classes such as i2, i4 that are specific to the item.

HMTL Code

<div class="container">
  <div class="item">1</div>
  <div class="item i2">2</div>
  <div class="item">3</div>
  <div class="item i4">4</div>
  <div class="item">5</div>
</div>


CSS Code

.container {
  background-color: #ccc;
  display: flex;;
  justify-content: space-between;
  align-items: center;
}

.item {
  background-color: orangered;
  padding: 30px;
  margin: 20px;
  color: #fff;
  font-size: 40px;
}

.i2 {
  height: 200px;
}


align-self: flex-end

This property aligns the item along the cross axis and at the end of the cross axis. As you see in the example, all the items are located at the center due to align-items: center but only item 4 is located at the end of the cross axis. Note that it might look weird since item 2 has a different height. But the item 2 is still aligned in the center of the cross axis.

.i4 {
    align-self: flex-end;
}


align-self: flex-start

This one is the opposite of the flex-end. You will see the item 4 is now aligned at the start of the cross axis.

.i4 {
    align-self: flex-start;
}


align-self: stretch

This property stretches the flex item to fill the entire container. You will see the height of item 4 is now the same as item 2 since it is the max height item – 200px.

.i4 {
    align-self: stretch;
}


order: <integer>

The order property decides the order of the flex items in the container. By default, all the items have 0 for the order value. In this example, I put -1 to item 4, and now it is the first one to be placed among all the items because -1 < 0 and flexbox always display the item based on the order (lowest order first).

.i4 {
    align-self: flex-end;
    order: -1;
}


What if you put -2 order value to item 3? Since -2 < -1, the item 3 will be placed before the item 4.


flex-grow: <integer>

The flex-grow property indicates the growth of each item. As you can see in the example below, setting flex-grow: 1 made all the items grow as much as possible. The space between the items is because of the margin property.

.item {
  /* skipped all the common properties since they are defined above */
  flex-grow: 1;
}


Note that the number is to indicate the relation compared to others. Just for the above example, it doesn’t matter which number you put because there is only one flex-grow in the item class. Then, what happens if we put flex-grow: 2 to item class such as i2?

.i2 {
  height: 200px;
  flex-grow: 2;
}


Do you see that the item 2 has double width of other items? it’s because the item2 has flex-grow: 2 which is twice of the other items – flex-grow: 1.

flex-basis: <% or px>

You can set a width of a flex item by using flex-basis property. When you deal with flex items, you usually use flex-basis instead of width property. In the example below, the item 2 now occupies 40% of the container.

.i2 {
  height: 200px;
  flex-basis: 40%;
}


flex-shrink: <integer>

Unlike flex-grow, flex-shrink tells the flexbox how the items should shrink when the viewport size change. I didn’t paste the example picture here as it was bit hard to capture the screenshot to indicate the viewport size. However, I still pasted the code example which you can try in the codepen.

.i2 {
  height: 200px;
  flex-basis: 300px;
  flex-shrink: 1;
}


The item 2 has now the fixed width in the container and flex-shrink is allowed (value 1). As you decrease the viewport width you will see the item shrinks. What happens if you disable the shrink? (flex-shrink: 0). Then, you will see that the item 2 will always keep the width of 300px.


flex: <grow> <shrink> <basis>

We have taken a look at the three flex item properties – grow, shrink, basis. However, it is actually more recommended to use flex property instead of others. It is the shorthand of all and very convenient to use. And using flex property instead of those three are is considered a best practice.

.i2 {
  height: 200px;
  flex: 0 0 300px;
}

.i4 {
  order: 2;
  flex: 1;
}

Item 2 doesn’t grow and shrink but has a fixed width of 300px. So the items 1,2,3,5 are rendered first. Then, item 4 has flex-grow enabled so it takes the remaining available space after 1,2,3,5. If you decrease the viewport width on your screen, you will see item 4 will shrink but not item 2. However, if you allow shrinking in item 2 (flex: 0 1 300px) then you will see item 4 shrink first because it has the largest space followed by item 2.


Conclusion

We have completed a long journey of taking a look at basics of flexbox. There are a ton of more stuff and will try to write in different posts.

CSS – Intro to Flexbox Part 2

This is the continuation of the post – css intro to flexbox part 1. Part 1 mostly focused on explaining conceptual things. In this post, I am going to focus on showing examples for each flexbox property. Note that all the other common css code is in part 1. I wrote necessary code only for each property.

justify-content

As explained in part 1 post, justify-content tells you how the flex items should be aligned along the main axis.

justify-content: center

justify-content:center aligns the flex items in the middle of the container but doesn’t do anything for the space between the items because space is defined by the margin.

.container {
    justify-content: center;
}


justify-content: space-between

Space is evenly distributed between flex items. Flexbox automatically calculates all the spaces and positions for each item. Space between the items will be automatically adjusted if the width of the container changes.

.container {
    justify-content: space-between;
}


justify-content: space-around

space around puts the same amount of space for both left and right side of each item. You will see that the space between item 1 and 2 are double of the left space of item 1. The difference between space-between and space-around is that space-between only evenly distributes the space between the items but space-around puts all the space equally for both left/right side.

.container {
    justify-content: space-around;
}


justify-content: space-evenly

space-evenly puts equal space to all sides. As you can see all the spaces are same here. It ensures all the spaces between the elements and side of the elements are same.

.container {
    justify-content: space-evenly;
}


justify-content: flex-end

flex-end puts all the elements to the end. Note that main-axis here is horizontal from left to right that all the elements are placed on the right side.

.container {
    justify-content: flex-end;
}


justify-content: flex-start

This is the default option which places all the items to the start (main axis from left to right) which is left side.

.container {
    justify-content: flex-start;
}


align-items

align-items tells how the flex items should be aligned along the cross axis which is perpendicular to main axis. To show the example, I need to have different height for one of the item.

New HTML Code for align-items example

<div class="container">
  <div class="item">1</div>
  <div class="item i2">2</div>
  <div class="item">3</div>
  <div class="item">4</div>
  <div class="item">5</div>
</div>

New CSS Code for align-items example

.i2 {
  height: 200px;
}


align-items: flex-start

Note again align-items will align the items along cross axis. flex-start will align all the items to the start of the axis which is top in this case. It might be little hard to see at first time. But take a closer look and you will see all the items are aligned at the top which is the start of the cross axis

.container {
    align-items: flex-start;
}


align-items: flex-end

flex-end now will place all the items at the end of the cross axis which is the bottom.

.container {
    align-items: flex-end;
}


align-items: center

As you can already guess, center will place all the items on the center of the cross axis.

.container {
    align-items: center;
}


align-items: stretch

This is the default mode which stretches all the items to the max of flex items. Since it’s default, you don’t need to specify at all.

.container {
    align-items: stretch;
}


align-items: baseline

baseline will align the items based on the text in the flex item. For the example, let me add another class – increasing the font size.

New HTML Code

note that i4 class is added to 4.

<div class="container">
  <div class="item">1</div>
  <div class="item i2">2</div>
  <div class="item">3</div>
  <div class="item i4">4</div>
  <div class="item">5</div>
</div>
New CSS Class
.i4 {
  font-size: 70px;
}

.container {
  align-items: baseline;
}


What happens if flex-direction: column?

It changes the main axis from top to bottom and cross axis from left to right. In this case, you will see all the items are in the center of horizontal line due to align-items: center (see the code below). justify-content: center makes sure all the items are centered vertically here.

.container {
    flex-direction: column;
    justify-content: center;
    align-items: center;
}


Conclusion

We have taken a look at how flex container properties work. I will continue to explain flex item properties in different post. For conceptual explanation, please take a look at part 1. And for more examples of flex items please take a look at part 3

CSS – Intro to Flexbox Part 1

This is CSS – intro to flexbox part 1. This post will explain what flexbox is and go over important properties along with examples.

What is flexblox?

Flexbox is a new module in CSS 3 which makes it easy to align elements to one another in different directions and orders. The key idea is to give the container ability to expand and shrink elements so it can use all the space efficiently. Flexbox actually replaces float layouts by using less but more readable and logical code. It changes the way that we build one-dimensional layouts.

Flexbox properties

Now let’s go over important properties of flexbox.

Flex container

It is a container of the flexbox which contains all the elements. Here is how you create the container in CSS

/* create a container */
display: flex;

/* creates a container that behaves like inline */
display: flex-inline;

Flex items

As you can see the above image, all the direct children of the flex container is called flex items.

Main/cross axis

The direction flex items are laid out is called main axis and the perpendicular axis is called cross axis.

Container properties

Container properties include flex-direction, flex-wrap, justify-content, align-items, align-content.

/* flex-direction property specifies which direction the main axis goes */
flex-direction: row | row-reverse | column | column-reverse

/* defines if flex items should wrap to next line
   if there is not enough space in the container
 */
flex-wrap: nowrap | wrap | wrap-reverse

/* defines how the flex items will be aligned along the main axis */
justify-content: flex-start | flex-end | center | space-between | space-around | space-evenly

/* very similar to justify-content. the difference is that this one defines
   how the items willbe aligned along the cross axis not the main axis
*/
align-items: stretch | flex-start | flex-end | center | baseline

/* only applies when there more than 1 row of flex items, 
   controls how the rows should be aligned along the cross axis
*/
align-content: stretch | flex-start | flex-end | center | space-between | space-around

Item properties

Item properties include align-self, order, flex-grow, flex-shrink, flex-basis.

/* very similar to align-items but applies to only one individual flex item */
align-self: auto | stretch | flex-start | flex-end | center | baseline

/* defines the order in which one specific flex items should appear inside container */
order: 0 | <integer>

/* three properties (flex-grow, flex-shrink, flex-basis), 
   help flexbox decide on the width of flex item
*/

flex-grow: 0 | integer
flex-shrink: 1 | integer
flex-basis: auto | length

/* This is short form of the above three properties which is recommended to use */
flex: 0 1 auto

Examples

Here are examples for each property.

HTML Code

<div class="container">
  <div class="item">1</div>
  <div class="item">2</div>
  <div class="item">3</div>
  <div class="item">4</div>
  <div class="item">5</div>
</div>

CSS Code

.container {
  background-color: #ccc;
  padding: 0 300px;
  
  /* creating flex container */
  display: flex;
  
  /* by default flex-direction is row for the container  so you don't need to specify */
  /* flex-direction: row; */
  /* flex-direction: row-reverse; */
  /* flex-direction: column; */
  /* flex-direction: column-reverse; */
}

.item {
  background-color: orangered;
  padding: 30px;
  margin: 20px;
  color: #fff;
  font-size: 40px;
}


flex-direction: row

By default flex-direction is row that you don’t need to specify anything. Note that main axis is horizontal from left to right.


flex-direction: row-reverse

Main axis is still horizontal but it’s from right to left


flex-direction: column

Main axis is now vertical from top to bottom


flex-direction: column-reverse

Main axis is vertical but it’s from bottom to top

There are still many more examples to go through but I will explain them in a different post as this one gets longer.

SASS – mixin for responsive design

In this post, I am going to explain how to use SASS mixin for responsive design which is very powerful way.

In CSS, there is a media query you can use to present a different layout for different screen size. However, it would be very tedious to write media query break points in every CSS component you write. What if screen size changes for a phone or tablet? You probably do not want to go through everything to fix it. There needs to be a better way to handle different screen size flexibly and let’s take a look at each option

mixin directive

what is mixin? It is a directive and lets you create CSS code that is to be reused throughout the website. It’s basically like a function in different programming languages.

Let’s first define each breakpoints. These are the breakpoints I want to be able to handle.

0 - 600px: phone
600 - 900px: Tablet portrait
900 - 1200px: Tablet landscape
[1200-1800] is where our normal styles apply
1800px + : Big Desktop

Use mixin directive – option 1

We are going to create a mixin called respond-phone so that you can just include the mixin in each component/layout for phone.
Please note that @content directive allows to pass in a block of code to mixin.

// _mixins.scss
@mixin respond-phone {
    // content directive allows to pass in a block of code to mixin
    @media (max-width: 600px) { @content };
}

// _base.scss
html {
    font-size: 62.5%;
    
    @include respond-phone {
        font-size: 50%;
    }
}

Originally, the font size is 62.5% of the root font size. However, by using the respond-phone mixin, it changes to 50%. It is pretty convenient because you don’t need to hard code media query every place. Instead, you just need to create necessary mixin functions (i.e., respond-tablet-portrait, respond-tablet-landscape) and use it. Although this is certainly an improvement, is there a better way? Is there a way to use just one mixin to represent all?

Use mixin directive – option 2

Since mixin is like a function, it can take an argument. It enables us to write a mixin that specifies proper media query breakpoint based on the argument!

Please note that unlike the example above, I used em instead of px. Why? It’s because if a user changes the default font size in a browser media queries will not be affected by that. However, we want the media query to reflect the change in default font size in a browser setting. Since em is a relative unit, it is the perfect one to use.

In a media query, em is always affected by the one that comes from the browser which is 16px. 1em = 16px

// _mixins.scss
/*
$breakpoint argument choices:
- phone
- tab-port
- tab-land
- big-desktop
*/
@mixin respond($breakpoint) {
  @if $breakpoint == phone {
    @media (max-width: 37.5em) { @content }; // 600px
  }
  @if $breakpoint == tab-port {
    @media (max-width: 56.25em) { @content }; // 900px
  }
  @if $breakpoint == tab-land {
    @media (max-width: 75em) { @content }; // 1200px
  }
  @if $breakpoint == big-desktop {
    @media (min-width: 112.5em) { @content }; // 1800px
  }
}

Now, we have a single mixin to use for all different screen sizes. Let’s take a look at how to use them

// _base.scss
html {
  font-size: 62.5%; // 1rem = 10px; 10 / 16 = 62.5%

  @include respond(tab-land) { // width < 900?
    font-size: 56.25%; // 1rem = 9px, 9 / 16 = 56.25%
  }

  @include respond(tab-port) { // width < 600 ?
    font-size: 50%; // 1rem = 8px, 8 / 16 = 50%
  }

  @include respond(phone) {
    font-size: 43.75%; // 1rem = 7px, 7 / 16 = 43.75%
  }

  @include respond(big-desktop) {
    font-size: 75%; // 1rem = 12px, 12/16 = 75%;
  }
}

Here, we are trying to use font-size as a breakpoint for different screen layout. You can see that I want to use different font-size for different screen and I converted to percentage to be flexible.

Please note the order of the mixin. All the max-width mixins are in a decreasing order. It’s ordered to prevent unintentional side effect. For example, if the screen size is 500px, it will fall under all the tablets and phone size. In that case, the last property written is selected and that’s why I ordered them in a decreasing size way.

Conclusion

It’s not simple to write a responsive designs due to its complexity. However, using the mixin could help a lot.

CSS – Build Navigation

This post will explain how to build a simple navigation logic for a webpage.
Please note that I have learned this from the udemy course by Jonas Schmedtmann.
Let’s take a look at the example first.

Example

Please note a couple of things. The navigation button always stays on the upper right corner (even if you scroll). And there is an animation from the button as soon as you click it. In this post, button animation is not explained. Please refer to the post here for button animation.

HTML Code

<div class="navigation">
    <input type="checkbox" class="navigation__checkbox" id="navi-toggle">
    <label for="navi-toggle" class="navigation__button">
        <span class="navigation__icon"> </span>
    </label>
    <div class="navigation__background"> </div>
    <nav class="navigation__nav">
        <ul class="navigation__list">
            <li class="navigation__item"><a href="#" class="navigation__link"><span>01</span>Option 1</a></li>
            <li class="navigation__item"><a href="#" class="navigation__link"><span>02</span>Option 2</a></li>
            <li class="navigation__item"><a href="#" class="navigation__link"><span>03</span>Option 3</a></li>
            <li class="navigation__item"><a href="#" class="navigation__link"><span>04</span>Option 4</a></li>
            <li class="navigation__item"><a href="#" class="navigation__link"><span>05</span>Option 5</a></li>
        </ul>
    </nav>
</div>

CSS Code – SCSS

Please don’t forget to replace SCSS variables into actual numbers.

There are three main functionalities here (except button animation)
1. The existing screen will be covered by navigation background (animation starts from the button)
2. Another animation when you hover over each option
3. Background animation bounces when render

Let’s take a look at each class now.

.navigation {
  &__checkbox {
    display: none;
  }

  &__button {
    background-color: $color-white;
    height: 7rem;
    width: 7rem;
    border-radius: 50%;
    position: fixed;
    top: 6rem;
    right: 6rem;
    z-index: 1000;
    box-shadow: 0 1rem 3rem rgba($color-black, .1);
    text-align: center;
    cursor: pointer;
  }

  &__background {
    height: 6rem;
    width: 6rem;
    border-radius: 50%;
    position: fixed; // similar to absolute. but it doesn't change the position as we scroll the page
    top: 6.5rem;
    right: 6.5rem;
    // difference bewteen linear gradient and radial gradient
    // linear gradient goes from one side to the other
    // radial gradient goes from the center to others
    background-image: radial-gradient($color-primary-light, $color-primary-dark);
    z-index: 500;

    // easings.net
    transition: transform .8s cubic-bezier(.86, 0, .07, 1);
  }
 
  &__nav {
    height: 100vh;
    position: fixed;
    top: 0;
    left: 0;
    z-index: 600;

    opacity: 0;
    width: 0;
    transition: all .8s cubic-bezier(.68, -.55, .265, 1.55);
  }

  &__list {
    position: absolute;
    top: 50%;
    left: 50%;
    transform: translate(-50%, -50%);
    list-style: none;
    text-align: center;
    width: 100%;
  }

  &__item {
    margin: 1rem;
  }

  &__link {
    &:link,
    &visited {
      display: inline-block;
      font-size: 3rem;
      font-weight: 300;
      padding: 1rem 2rem;
      color: $color-white;
      text-decoration: none;
      text-transform: uppercase;
      background-image: linear-gradient(
        120deg,
        transparent 0%,
        transparent 50%,
        $color-white 50%);

      // size of the background, shift to the left to render animation
      background-size: 220%;
      transition: all .4s;

      span {
        margin-right: 1.5rem;
        display: inline-block;
      }
    }
    
    &:hover,
    &:active {
      background-position: 100%;
      color: $color-primary;
      transform: translateX(1rem);
    }
  }

  // FUNCTIONALITY
  &__checkbox:checked ~ &__background {
    transform: scale(80);
  }

  &__checkbox:checked ~ &__nav {
    opacity: 1;
    width: 100%;
  }
}

Navigation Background Animation

The most important things to note are
1. background-image: radial-gradient at line 30.
Unlike linear-gradient making the color from one side to the other side, radial-gradient makes gradient color from the center to all directions. (it’s like a water ripple)

2. transition: transform .8s cubic-bezier(.86, 0, .07, 1) at line 34
This is a bezier curve to provide a custom timing function. There are multiple websites that help you find various timing functions. The number is also calculated from one of the websites.

3. position: fixed at line 24
This is to fix the navigation button in the upper right corner. How is this different from absolute? Unline absolute, fixed doesn’t change the position even if you scroll the page and takes out the element from the float.

4. transform: scale(80) at line 99
This is the line to scale up to cover the entire screen when the checkbox is clicked. Please note that sibling selector is used because you want to select navigation__background and navigation__nav only when the checkbox is clicked. Please also note that the nav opacity is initially 0 and width is 0 to make it completely gone but once the checkbox is clicked it will have opacity 1 and proper width.

Navigation Option Animation

The most important thing to note is
1. &__link class
background-image: linear-gradient at line 73 is solid color gradients usage that you can specify different color in each stage (%). As you can see in the code, it rotates 120 degrees and transparent 0% and 50% and white color starting at 50%. But this alone doesn’t make the animation. It will just show you a different mix of the color. You need to have background-size at line 80 so that you will be able to shift the color by making the size bigger. Then when you hover (at line 89), you just need to re-position the element. Don’t forget to put transition: all .4s for animation.