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Using CSS Grid in Loklak Search

CSS Grid is the latest web standard for the layouts in the web applications. This is the web standard which allows the HTML page to be viewed as 2-dimensional for laying out the elements in the page. It is thus used in parts of loklak search for layout. In this blog post, I will discuss the basic naming convention for CSS grid and its usage in Loklak Search for layout structuring and responsiveness.

CSS Grid Basics

There are some basic terminologies regarding grid few major ones are the following

Grid Container

The grid container is the container which is the wrapper of all the grid items. It is declared by display: grid, this makes all the direct children of that element to become grid items.

Grid Tracks

We define rows and columns of the grid as the lines, the area between any two lines is called a grid track. Tracks can be defined using any length unit. Grid also introduces an additional length unit to help us create flexible grid tracks. The new fr unit represents a fraction of the available space in the grid container.

Grid Cells

The area between any two horizontal and vertical lines is called a grid cell.

Grid Area

The area formed by the combination of two or more cells is called a grid area.

Using CSS grid in Loklak Search

The CSS grid is used in loklak search uses CSS grid in the feeds page to align elements in a responsive way on mobile and desktop. Earlier there was the issue that on small displays the info box of the results appeared after the feed results, and we needed to make sure that it appears on top on smaller displays. This is the outline of the structure of the feed page.

<div class=”feed-wrapper”>
<div class=”feed-results”>
<!-- Feed Results -->
</div>

<div class=”feed-info-box”>
<!-- Feed Info Box -->
</div>
</div>

Now we use the CSS grid to position the items according to the display width. First we declare the “feed-wrapper” as display:grid to make it a Grid Container, and we associate the rows and columns accordingly.

.feed-wrapper {
   display: grid;
   grid-template-columns: 150px 632px 455px 1fr;
   grid-template-rows: auto;
}

This defines the grid to be consisting of 4 columns of width 150px, 632px,  455px and one remaining unit i.e. 1fr. The rows are set to be auto.

Now we define the grid areas i.e. the names of the areas using the grid-area:<area> css property. This gives names to the elements in the CSS grid.

.feed-results {
   grid-area: feed-results;
}

.feed-info-box {
   grid-area: feed-info-box;
}

The last thing which remains now is to specify the position of these grid elements in the grid cells according to the display width, we use simple media queries along with simple grid area positioning property, i.e. grid-template-areas.

.feed-wrapper {
   /* Other Properties */
   @media(min-width: 1200px) {
      grid-template-areas: ". feed-results feed-info-box .";
   }

   @media(max-width: 1199px) {
      grid-template-columns: 1fr;
      grid-template-areas:
         "feed-info-box"
         "feed-results";
   }
}

This positions both the boxes according to the display width, in one column for large displays, and info box on top of results on mobile displays.

This is how it looks on the large desktop displays

 

This is how it looks on small mobile displays

Links and References

 

 

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