Grid remains very much in play. CSS has made it a standard. Flexbox is better in my opinion, but grid definitely has its place when specific sizing or arrangement is needed.
Dale said:
Grid remains very much in play. CSS has made it a standard. Flexbox is better in my opinion, but grid definitely has its place when specific sizing or arrangement is needed.
The original poster isn’t talking about display: grid;, but rather grid systems like those provided by Bootstrap.
Pixels are still pixels; we just have way more of them now.
Teagan said:
Pixels are still pixels; we just have way more of them now.
As long as you’re not referring to the CSS pixel unit since pixels can mean something else entirely.
Many have already addressed what’s truly relevant. I think having defined maximums and minimums will shape designs moving forward, especially if new screen types emerge. Can we anticipate what will look good later? Right now, we have ultra-wide screens. What will we do when we get ultra-ultra-wide screens? Grids may not be as necessary as before, but there’s no harm in having them. A tidy workspace always looks great too.
I use a spacing scale, not a 12-column bootstrap grid. I tend to use compound grids for design, with 2 or more overlaid grids.
If the 12-column grid system is less common now, how do you convert designs from something like Figma so that they fit whatever format or measurement you need for your front end?
I’m currently trying to wrap my head around how to implement design in CSS. Having some basis of measurement like a 12-column grid is helpful since it gives a common ground for the design. A column could be sized to any pixel measurement, keeping the proportions consistent.
How do others translate designs into CSS?
Grids can still be useful, but I think Subgrid does it better, and it’s now widely supported.
As I see it, layout grids weren’t essential in the code itself. They helped developers make sense of design concepts, which often seemed unclear.
With the evolution of CSS, grid systems have advanced so developers can reduce the confusion from designers.
To me, the UI is more of a decorative part of my app, so I should be able to change things fairly easily.
Investing time in a grid system with all its details is great, but if you’re skilled with CSS, you can assemble a UI that works without needing a grid.
Sometimes I just place items on the screen in isolation.
For me, the UI is just an attractive hat that I can put on or take off, and as long as the structure of the codebase is easy to navigate, everything else falls into place without issue.
This does change if you’re part of a team using shared conventions—then just stick to the guidelines.
I don’t find grids useful at all, at least from a development standpoint.
They might help with some design aspects like alignment, but that’s about it.