CSS Grid

With CSS there are multiple ways of positioning elements such as

position: absolute;

, "display: flex;" and `display: grid;`. CSS grid ("display: grid;") is a really nice CSS property to position elements on a grid layout.

This article describes the basic concepts of CSS grid and links to resources with more info on CSS grid.

CSS grid places its direct children onto a "grid". In the following HTML snippet the parent element has the class 'grid-container' and 6 children.

<div class="grid-container">
  <div>Grid item 1</div>
  <div>Grid item 2</div>
  <div>Grid item 3</div>
  <div>Grid item 4</div>
  <div>Grid item 5</div>
  <div>Grid item 6</div>
</div>

We first have to set the parent element to be displayed as a grid via the CSS property "display".

<style>
.grid-container {
  display: grid;
}
</style>

Now the code above will not show any difference in the browser. We also have to create columns and or rows. We can do this with the properties "grid-template-columns" and "grid-template-rows".

<style>
.grid-container {
  display: grid;
  grid-template-columns: 200px 200px 200px;
  grid-template-rows: 300px 300px;
}
</style>

The following code creates a grid of 3 columns, each column 200px wide and 2 rows of 300px height.

<div class="grid-container">
  <div>Grid item 1</div>
  <div>Grid item 2</div>
  <div>Grid item 3</div>
  <div>Grid item 4</div>
  <div>Grid item 5</div>
  <div>Grid item 6</div>
</div>

<style>
.grid-container {
  display: grid;
  grid-template-columns: 200px 200px 200px;
  grid-template-rows: 300px 300px;
}
</style>

Resources

• CSS Grid course by Wes Bos is full-on in depth course on CSS Grid
• MDN Web Docs has a good introduction to CSS Grid
• CSS Grid Garden is a fun CSS grid game
• CSS Tricks has a good reference article on CSS Grid