Item Flow, Part 1: A new unified concept for layout
11 comments
·April 2, 2025codeflo
moritzwarhier
if-bfrw\[auto\ 24px\]
see, a full masonry layout using just one CSS class!
ericyd
I kinda feel like CSS is already feature complete. I know they listed things that can't easily be done currently but I'm not upset about that.
andrewstuart
That’s what Microsoft said about IE6.
mediumsmart
css grid is a real grid. it can do masonry just fine. what they want is a shuffle feature.
6510
You can put 4 divs side by side in many ways, then jut put images in it.
andrewstuart
I really wish the CSS designers would drop “shorthand”.
CSS is complex enough without giving alternative names to things.
One syntax is enough .
moritzwarhier
I tend to agree, but have softened on this, not only but also because of the handy devtools feature to expand them.
I do use them for margin, padding, inset.
Others I dislike a bit, for example I hate the one for background whenever things get complex. Others I don't like, but have become used to, for example the "flex" shorthand. I prefer separate flex-grow, flex-shrink and flex-basis properties.
Downside (and sometimes, intended upside!) to all of them is how they interact with inheritance and the cascade, i.e. accidentally overriding properties. OTOH it can prevent you from forgetting to override inherited properties.
Since the properties for which a shorthand exists often are closely related, this can be an upside.
The one in the article I still have to digest.
wvbdmp
One neat thing about them is that you can combine, for instance, all font-* properties into a single variable for reuse.
gedy
Looks nice, and I'm glad they put some effort to fit into the current properties and capabilities. It felt like in past, examples such as adding CSS grid syntax was really different/idiosyncratic for unclear reasons.
rprwhite
I mean, this is just this https://xkcd.com/927/ actually happening.
Clearly, the answer is more standards!
Can't wait to learn the three-letter Tailwind names for these things!