Css Grid Column Width Complete Guide

Understanding CSS Grid Column Width can be a bit tricky, but don't worry, it's actually quite straightforward once you get the hang of it.

CSS Grid allows you to define the width of columns using the grid-template-columns property. This property takes a list of track sizes as its value, where each track size is a length or a fraction of the available space.

The grid-template-columns property can be defined using different units, such as pixels, percentages, or fractional lengths. For example, you can define a column width of 200px or 30% of the available space.

To make the most of CSS Grid, it's essential to understand how to set the width of columns effectively. By mastering this concept, you can create responsive and flexible layouts that adapt to different screen sizes.

CSS Basics are a must-know for any web developer. Most browsers shipped native support for CSS Grid as of March 2017.

You can define a container element as a grid with display: grid. The time to build with grid is now! Internet Explorer 10 and 11 support CSS Grid, but it's an old implementation with an outdated syntax.

To get started, you need to set the column and row sizes with grid-template-columns and grid-template-rows. The source order of the grid items doesn't matter, making it super easy to rearrange your grid with media queries.

Grid Setup is a crucial step in creating a CSS grid layout. You can define your grid column and row tracks using the grid-template-columns and grid-template-rows properties.

To set up your grid, you'll need to specify the width of each column track using the grid-template-columns property. For example, you can create a three-column grid layout with grid-template-columns: 200px 1fr 2fr.

Each value in the grid-template-columns property creates a column track, and the fr unit allocates remaining space to each track. In the example, column 1 has a fixed width of 200px, and column 2 and 3 are 1fr and 2fr wide, respectively.

The fr unit is calculated by subtracting non-fr values and gaps from the available space. In this case, the remaining available width is 900px, and the 3 fractional units are allocated to column 2 and 3. This means column 2 is 300px wide (1fr x 300px), and column 3 is 600px wide (2fr x 300px).

You can also specify the height of each row track using the grid-template-rows property. For example, grid-template-rows: 100px 300px creates a grid with the first two rows being 100px and 300px high, respectively.

Flexbox is a smart layout system that can automatically adjust column widths to accommodate gutters. You can add gutters between columns by setting a column-gap declaration, and Flexbox will take care of the rest.

To ensure your columns don't trip over to multiple lines, you need to explicitly set a narrower width for each column. This is because the total gutter width needs to be accounted for in the overall width of the container.

For example, if you have a 2rem gutter width and three columns, each column's width will be 100% minus 4rem (2rem x 2 gutters) divided by 3.

Flexbox is smart, you can add gutters between your columns and they will automatically reduce in size to compensate.

To fix this, we need to explicitly set the correct (narrower) width to each column to allow for the gutters. You can calculate this by subtracting the total gutter width from the total width and then dividing by the number of columns.

For example, if you have gutters set to 2rem, that's a total of 4rem of gutter-width between your three columns. So each column width will be 100% minus 4rem then divided by 3.

To calculate this, use the same units in your calc as you do in your column-gap declaration, such as %, px, em, vw, vh, or whatever works best for your situation.

You can use a formula like: (100% - (gutter-width * n)) / n, where n is the number of columns.

CSS properties play a crucial role in defining the layout and design of a grid.

The CSS grid-template-columns property allows you to define the number and size of columns in a grid container.

Grid containers can have a maximum of 25 grid tracks, which is the total number of grid lines including the grid lines that separate the columns and rows.

The CSS grid-gap property is used to add space between grid items, making it easier to create a visually appealing grid layout.

Grid items can have a negative margin, but this is not recommended as it can cause the grid layout to break.

The CSS grid-template-rows property is used to define the number and size of rows in a grid container.

The row-gap property specifies the size of the grid lines between rows. This is also known as the gutter between rows.

To set the size of the grid lines, you can use a length value, such as 10px or 20%.

Here are some examples of valid values for the row-gap property:

Note that the gutters are only created between the rows, not on the outer edges.

Column-Start is a crucial property in grid systems. It determines the starting point of a grid column.

Grid columns can be aligned to the left, right, or center of a grid container. The align-items property is used to align items within a grid container. However, for grid columns, we use the justify-items property to control their alignment.

The justify-items property takes the same values as align-items: flex-start, flex-end, center, space-between, and space-around. This means we can align our grid columns to the left, right, or center of the grid container, or distribute them evenly.

Grid containers can be either block-level or inline-level. Block-level containers start on a new line, while inline-level containers display on the same line as surrounding content.

Column-End is a crucial property in grid systems, allowing you to specify the alignment of column-end markers.

In CSS Grid Layout, the column-end property is used to specify the alignment of column-end markers, which are the points where columns end. You can align column-end markers to the edge of the grid container or to the edge of a grid item.

The column-end property can be specified as a keyword or as a length value.

The Row-End property is used to specify the alignment of content at the end of a row. It can be set to start, end, center, or stretch.

Grid containers automatically set the Row-End property to end, which means content will align to the end of the row by default.

Align Self is a crucial property in grid systems, and it's essential to understand how it works. It aligns a grid item inside a cell along the block (column) axis.

The align-self property has four values: start, end, center, and stretch. The start value aligns the grid item to be flush with the start edge of the cell, while the end value aligns it to be flush with the end edge of the cell.

To align all the items in a grid, you can set the align-self behavior on the grid container via the align-items property.

Here are the four values of the align-self property:

The stretch value is the default for align-self, which means it will automatically fill the whole height of the cell if not specified otherwise.

CSS Grid has come a long way, and as of March 2017, most browsers shipped native, unprefixed support for it. This means you can start building with grid right away.

The auto-fill and auto-fit keywords are game-changers when it comes to responsive grid layouts. They allow you to create layouts that adapt to different screen widths without needing media queries.

To use auto-fill or auto-fit, you can set grid-template-columns to repeat(auto-fill, minmax(200px, 1fr)). This creates a responsive grid that adjusts to the available space.

The choice between auto-fill and auto-fit depends on the desired behavior. If you want grid items to expand to fill the available space, use auto-fit. If you want to keep the available space, use auto-fill.

Grid is one of the most powerful CSS modules ever introduced, and using auto-fill and auto-fit keywords is a great way to harness its power.

To create a grid layout, you simply need to set the Display value to grid for any layout element, such as a section, container, block, or div, and it becomes your Grid Container.

Every direct child element of your Grid container is a Grid Item, which can have additional settings for Grid column & Grid row to place it within the grid.

The grid overlay becomes visible when editing a grid container in the builder, indicating the grid cells, and you can show or hide it by clicking the little four-square element action icon.

Grid-template-areas is a powerful tool for defining the structure of your grid layout. It works by referencing the names of grid areas specified with the grid-area property.

To define a grid template, you'll need to specify the names of the grid areas, separated by spaces. Repeating the name of a grid area causes the content to span those cells. A period signifies an empty cell.

The syntax itself provides a visualization of the structure of the grid. For example, if you have a grid that's four columns wide by three rows tall, you can define it like this: grid-template-areas: "header header header . . footer footer footer".

Each row in your declaration needs to have the same number of cells. You can use any number of adjacent periods to declare a single empty cell, as long as the periods have no spaces between them.

Notice that you're not naming lines with this syntax, just areas. When you use this syntax, the lines on either end of the areas are actually getting named automatically. For example, if the name of your grid area is "foo", the name of the area's starting row line and starting column line will be "foo-start", and the name of its last row line and last column line will be "foo-end".

Grid-auto-rows specifies the size of any auto-generated grid tracks.

You can define the size of these tracks as a length, a percentage, or a fraction of the free space in the grid using the fr unit.

Implicit grid tracks get created when there are more grid items than cells in the grid, or when a grid item is placed outside of the explicit grid.

To illustrate how implicit grid tracks get created, think about this: if you reference column lines that don’t exist, implicit tracks with widths of 0 are created to fill in the gaps.

You can use grid-auto-columns and grid-auto-rows to specify the widths of these implicit tracks.

To create a grid layout, you can turn any layout element into a CSS grid layout by setting its Display value to grid. This element is your Grid Container.

Every direct child element of your Grid container is a Grid Item, with additional settings for Grid column & Grid row to place an item it within the grid.

You can edit a grid container in the builder to make a grid overlay visible, indicating the grid cells. This overlay can be shown or hidden by clicking the four-square element action icon.

Grid items are laid out in rows by default, covering the full width of the grid container.

grid-auto-flow controls how the auto-placement algorithm works for grid items not explicitly placed on the grid. It has three options: row, column, and dense.

Here are the options for grid-auto-flow:

Setting up column & row tracks explicitly via the Grid template columns (grid-template-columns) & Grid template rows (grid-template-rows) settings of your grid container allows you to define the layout.

Grid Layout is a powerful tool for arranging elements on a webpage, and one of its core concepts is the Row-Start. A Row-Start is a special type of grid item that marks the beginning of a new row in a grid container.

It's essentially a placeholder that helps the grid system understand where to start a new row. The Row-Start is defined using the grid-row-start property, which takes a value in the form of a grid line or a span value.

The grid-row-start property can be set to a specific grid line, like '1', or a span value, like '1 / 2', which means the Row-Start will span across two grid tracks. This property is what tells the grid system where to place the Row-Start in the grid container.

Grid layout makes it easy to arrange content in a grid-based structure. This allows for more control over the layout of your website or application.

The grid-row property is shorthand for grid-row-start + grid-row-end. It's used to specify the start and end lines of a grid item.

You can declare the start and end lines using the / symbol, and each one accepts all the same values as the longhand version, including span.

If you only declare the start line, the item will span 1 track by default.