Over the past few years, it’s been interesting to watch web layouts take centre stage within the world of CSS. The main catalyst for this coming to the forefront is a better understanding by everyone of the importance of the user experience and content flow of any responsive website. Or maybe we’re in a post-float development world. First with Flexbox and most recently with CSS Grid layout options, our choices and abilities for thoughtful layouts are expanding greatly.
We’re still in the early days of Grid’s adoption in browsers. Visit caniuse.com/#feat=css-grid (opens in new tab) for some interesting numbers and notes around the current adoption.
It is currently supported on the WebKit Nightly if prefixed with -webkitand it looks like non-mobile browsers such as IE, Edge, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera will all have partial to full support in their next release. My hope is that relatively soon, the global support percentage will have gone up significantly from the current 6.28 per cent.
There are some helpful resources around CSS Grid. Luckily, css-tricks.com/snippets/css/complete-guide-grid (opens in new tab) has a complete guide, written and updated by Chris House (opens in new tab).
Also, for the more visually inclined, Rachel Andrew (opens in new tab) has done a phenomenal job collecting all resources around grid, with blog updates and, best of all, examples of common UI patterns (opens in new tab). These resources should have you up and running in supporting browsers in no time.
This article was originally published in net magazine (opens in new tab) issue 293. Buy it here. (opens in new tab)
Related articles:
- CSS tricks to revolutionise your layouts (opens in new tab)
- 5 tips for super-fast CSS (opens in new tab)
- Understanding the CSS display property (opens in new tab)