1. Create Your First CSS Grid
display: grid;
2. Add Columns with grid-template-columns
Simply creating a grid element doesn’t get you very far. You need to define the structure of the grid as well. To add some columns to the grid, use the grid-template-columns property on a grid container as demonstrated below:
.container {
display: grid;
grid-template-columns: 50px 50px;
}
This will give your grid two columns that are each 50px wide. The number of parameters given to the grid-template-columns property indicates the number of columns in the grid, and the value of each parameter indicates the width of each column.
3. Add Rows with grid-template-rows
The grid you created in the last challenge will set the number of rows automatically. To adjust the rows manually, use the grid-template-rows property in the same way you used grid-template-columns in previous challenge.
4. Use CSS Grid units to Change the Size of Columns and Rows
You can use absolute and relative units like px and em in CSS Grid to define the size of rows and columns. You can use these as well:
fr: sets the column or row to a fraction of the available space,
auto: sets the column or row to the width or height of its content automatically,
%: adjusts the column or row to the percent width of its container.
Here’s the code that generates the output in the preview:
grid-template-columns: auto 50px 10% 2fr 1fr;
This snippet creates five columns. The first column is as wide as its content, the second column is 50px, the third column is 10% of its container, and for the last two columns; the remaining space is divided into three sections, two are allocated for the fourth column, and one for the fifth.
5. Create a Column Gap Using grid-column-gap
So far in the grids you have created, the columns have all been tight up against each other. Sometimes you want a gap in between the columns. To add a gap between the columns, use the grid-column-gap property like this:
grid-column-gap: 10px;
This creates 10px of empty space between all of our columns.
6. Create a Row Gap using grid-row-gap
You can add a gap in between the rows of a grid using grid-row-gap in the same way that you added a gap in between columns in the previous challenge.
7. Add Gaps Faster with grid-gap
grid-gap is a shorthand property for grid-row-gap and grid-column-gap from the previous two challenges that’s more convenient to use. If grid-gap has one value, it will create a gap between all rows and columns. However, if there are two values, it will use the first one to set the gap between the rows and the second value for the columns.
8. Use grid-column to Control Spacing
9. Use grid-row to Control Spacing
10. Align an Item Horizontally using justify-self
In CSS Grid, the content of each item is located in a box which is referred to as a cell. You can align the content’s position within its cell horizontally using the justify-self property on a grid item. By default, this property has a value of stretch, which will make the content fill the whole width of the cell. This CSS Grid property accepts other values as well:
start: aligns the content at the left of the cell,
center: aligns the content in the center of the cell,
end: aligns the content at the right of the cell.
11. Align an Item Vertically using align-self
Just as you can align an item horizontally, there’s a way to align an item vertically as well. To do this, you use the align-self property on an item. This property accepts all of the same values as justify-self from the last challenge.
12. Align All Items Horizontally using justify-items
Sometimes you want all the items in your CSS Grid to share the same alignment. You can use the previously learned properties and align them individually, or you can align them all at once horizontally by using justify-items on your grid container. This property can accept all the same values you learned about in the previous two challenges, the difference being that it will move all the items in our grid to the desired alignment.
13. Align All Items Vertically using align-items
14. Divide the Grid Into an Area Template
You can group cells of your grid together into an area and give the area a custom name. Do this by using grid-template-areas on the container like this:
grid-template-areas:
"header header header"
"advert content content"
"footer footer footer";
The code above merges the top three cells together into an area named header, the bottom three cells into a footer area, and it makes two areas in the middle row; advert and content. Note: Every word in the code represents a cell and every pair of quotation marks represent a row. In addition to custom labels, you can use a period (.) to designate an empty cell in the grid.
15. Place Items in Grid Areas Using the grid-area Property
After creating an area’s template for your grid container, as shown in the previous challenge, you can place an item in your custom area by referencing the name you gave it. To do this, you use the grid-area property on an item like this:
.item1 {
grid-area: header;
}
This lets the grid know that you want the item1 class to go in the area named header. In this case, the item will use the entire top row because that whole row is named as the header area.
16. Use grid-area Without Creating an Areas Template
The grid-area property you learned in the last challenge can be used in another way. If your grid doesn’t have an areas template to reference, you can create an area on the fly for an item to be placed like this:
item1 { grid-area: 1/1/2/4; }
This is using the line numbers you learned about earlier to define where the area for this item will be. The numbers in the example above represent these values:
grid-area: horizontal line to start at / vertical line to start at / horizontal line to end at / vertical line to end at;
So the item in the example will consume the rows between lines 1 and 2, and the columns between lines 1 and 4.
17. Reduce Repetition Using the repeat Function
When you used grid-template-columns and grid-template-rows to define the structure of a grid, you entered a value for each row or column you created.
Let’s say you want a grid with 100 rows of the same height. It isn’t very practical to insert 100 values individually. Fortunately, there’s a better way – by using the repeat function to specify the number of times you want your column or row to be repeated, followed by a comma and the value you want to repeat.
Here’s an example that would create the 100 row grid, each row at 50px tall.
grid-template-rows: repeat(100, 50px);
You can also repeat multiple values with the repeat function and insert the function amongst other values when defining a grid structure. Here’s what that looks like:
grid-template-columns: repeat(2, 1fr 50px) 20px;
This translates to:
grid-template-columns: 1fr 50px 1fr 50px 20px;
Note: The 1fr 50px is repeated twice followed by 20px.
18. Limit Item Size Using the minmax Function
There’s another built-in function to use with grid-template-columns and grid-template-rows called minmax. It’s used to limit the size of items when the grid container changes size. To do this you need to specify the acceptable size range for your item. Here is an example:
grid-template-columns: 100px minmax(50px, 200px);
In the code above, grid-template-columns is set to create two columns; the first is 100px wide, and the second has the minimum width of 50px and the maximum width of 200px.
19. Create Flexible Layouts Using auto-fill
The repeat function comes with an option called auto-fill. This allows you to automatically insert as many rows or columns of your desired size as possible depending on the size of the container. You can create flexible layouts when combining auto-fill with minmax, like this:
repeat(auto-fill, minmax(60px, 1fr));
When the container changes size, this setup keeps inserting 60px columns and stretching them until it can insert another one. Note: If your container can’t fit all your items on one row, it will move them down to a new one.
20. Create Flexible Layouts Using auto-fit
auto-fit works almost identically to auto-fill. The only difference is that when the container’s size exceeds the size of all the items combined, auto-fill keeps inserting empty rows or columns and pushes your items to the side, while auto-fit collapses those empty rows or columns and stretches your items to fit the size of the container.
Note: If your container can’t fit all your items on one row, it will move them down to a new one.
21. Use Media Queries to Create Responsive Layouts
22. Create Grids within Grids
Turning an element into a grid only affects the behavior of its direct descendants. So by turning a direct descendant into a grid, you have a grid within a grid.
For example, by setting the display and grid-template-columns properties of the element with the item3 class, you create a grid within your grid.