Kevin Powell - Community•3mo ago

Responsive Grid Auto-fit with defined Columns

Don't know if this has been done before but cool hack i did when working on a website: https://codepen.io/K_ellvyn/pen/WNqjrvm

5 Replies

clevermissfox•2mo ago

KPow has a couple videos showing this pattern. I think you need to account for more of the gap though , if you have four cols you’ll need

—total-gap: calc((var(—col-count) - 1 ) * var—(gap );

—total-gap: calc((var(—col-count) - 1 ) * var—(gap );

Then subtract that value instead of just one instance of gap ? I just skimmed your codepen so maybe you have that calculation somewhere but anyway here’s one relevant KPows videos (there’s another one I cannot find that I think will be helpful Grrr), timestamp 9:30

Kevin Powell

YouTube

Use this instead of media queries or container queries

Media queries are a bit limited in how they work, and while container queries go a really long way in solving a lot of those limitations, there are intrinsic patterns that we can follow that allow us to do things that neither one of them can do. The setup is a bit strange and can look complex, but, in my opinion, it's also 100% worth it! 🔗 Lin...

Kelvin•2mo ago

hm i saw his videos covering grid auto-fit but the problem i encountered was that once an grid child hit its 'min' threshold in a minmax function it wouldn't shrink more so i came up with that also how come youre subtracting one from the column count then multiplying the base gap?

clevermissfox•2mo ago

Because you don't just have one gap if you have 4 columns. You have 3 , a gap in-between col1 & col2, gap bw col2 & col3 , gap bw col3 & col4. You'll have one less gap as you have columns so if you have 6 cols, you have 5 gaps, 8cols 7 gaps, 10 cols 9 gaps, etc. You want to account for all those gaps not just one to calculate the breakpoint. I love the min() function it's one of my favourite things in css I think. Makes responsiveness soo much easier. You do need a fixed value , not necessarily pixels but has to be rems, ch, px, ex etc something fixed to use min(100%, 40ch)

.container {
--_col-count: 4;
--_min-col-width: 40ch;
--_gap: 1em; 
--_breakpoint-calc: 
  100% -
  (var(--_col-count) * var(--_min-col-width) )
 - (( var(--_col-count) -1) 
* var(--_gap)); 
}

.container {
--_col-count: 4;
--_min-col-width: 40ch;
--_gap: 1em; 
--_breakpoint-calc: 
  100% -
  (var(--_col-count) * var(--_min-col-width) )
 - (( var(--_col-count) -1) 
* var(--_gap)); 
}

Kelvin•2mo ago

oh right just saw the video the way i did it was i passed down the width of the container and divided that by the number of columns and then subtracted that by the gap figured that there was gonna be a fixed width in the equation anyways so might as well just divide the container i think my solution is good if multiple breakpoints are needed for a grid and kps solution would work as a media query hack

clevermissfox•2mo ago

It's nice to just have it break at the right time without adding any media queries if you calculate where those breakpoints should be. There's a name for this hack but I forget what it is. Something like the Holy Grail

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Responsive Grid Auto-fit with defined Columns