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The ultimate CSS battle: Grid vs Flexbox

Per on June 07, 2019

CSS Flexbox has become extremely popular amongst front-end developers in the last couple of years. This isnโ€™t surprising, as it has made it a lot e...
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redcamel profile image
RedCamel

just Grid!!!

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clara profile image
Clara

Hi thanks for this nicly written article. I also really like the illustrations :)
I have one question - I am fairly new to CSS grid so I try to understand its usecases. Why do you prefer using a CSS grid over a mere flexbox for the header and then one flexbox for sidebar and content and footer?
It is so the footer stays in place?
Thank you!

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Zupirio

Flexbox is unidirectional, from left to right while CSS Grid is bidirectional. If you follow the course (which is nice and concise) you'll learn that you can combine both grid & flexbox.

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Nicola Di Marco ๐Ÿ”ฅ๐Ÿ™

It would have been very easy to achieve the same result using Flex only.
The only real use case I can think of when it's essential to use Grid is when there's a long text that has to be dynamically distributed on (changing) number columns.

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Vic Seedoubleyew

Thanks for this article!

I had never heard of Grid, so I am totally new to it.

However, it seems to me that these examples might be misleading in order to understand the use cases for it:

  • using a grid for the final 2-dimensional layout seems like a uselessly rigid design compared to using one main vertical flexbox filled with horizontal flexboxes
  • out of pure instinct, it seems to me that in cases like these examples, using grid would be like using tables for layout: something that has been deemed bad practice, and I understand why, because it looks like perverting their purpose

This is really out of pure intuition on my part, since I don't know this at all, but I found your other example with the image grid a lot more suited.

I would love to have your thoughts on this!

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Berns Fire Death

This is so great! Thank you so much for this!

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Adam Crockett ๐ŸŒ€

Is grid the end of the line for layout inavation?

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ZaneHannanAU

Nope.

There is no "end of the line" for CSS. In anything.

If you can deal with grid, flex, float and block you're already going pretty well here.

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Adam Crockett ๐ŸŒ€

In 20 years is grid the way we will do things, what do you predict?

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ZaneHannanAU

In 20 years we might be able to predict 2 years if technology with decent reliability.

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Nikoliฤ‡ Stjepan

Thanks Per, this is super useful!

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gunnerr91

I would personally prefer just using grid, everytime we are forced to use some margin/padding etc it feels like a hack.

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Alexander Alemayhu

I am struggling with CSS grid but Flexbox makes sense to me. This helps, thanks.