Welcome to Composing Layouts in React

Introduction

CSS in the Age of Components

What is Layout Composition? A React Layout Primitives Guide

Encapsulated CSS - How to Apply CSS in a Composable Way

Normal Document Flow in HTML, CSS, and React

CSS Grid vs Flexbox for Composable Layouts

How to Add a CSS Reset to Remove Default Browser Style

Composable Layouts

What are Layout Spacers?

How to Build a Stacked Component Layout in React

How to Build a Split Pane Layout in React

How to Build React Grid Layouts With Custom Column Numbers

How to Build a React Responsive Grid Layout

How to Build Responsive React Text Elements With InlineCluster

How to Add Inline Styling to React Components

Layout Primitives - The Spacers

Introduction to Layout Wrapper Primitives

How to Build a Pricing Page Widget in React With PadBox

Automatically Center Text DIVs with React Center Component

Resize Images And Maintain Aspect Ratio in React and CSS

How to Vertically Center a DIV in React With CSS

How to Build Accessible Navigation Divs in React

Layout Primitives - The Wrappers

Introduction to The Settings Pages

How to Build a React Navbar With a Menu and Header

How to Build a React Sidebar Menu

How to Build a Profile Settings Page in React

How to Build a Privacy Page with Toggle Buttons in React

Composing Layouts in Practice

CSS layout has grown and evolved into a robust set of tools to accomplish some fantastic modern layouts.
The problem is that we are still teaching CSS as something that is" hacked" together by using" tricks" to get our desired web layouts.
Learning CSS like this typically leads us down one of two paths: We either build fragile page layouts using 
the "see what sticks" method of CSS, or we give up and declare that CSS is too tricky and bring in an X column grid system like Twitter Bootstrap.

Creating page layouts in CSS doesn't have to be complicated. Like how you make much of your everyday speech using just a small 
subset of vocabulary composed together, you can achieve sophisticated layouts by composing simple low-level layout primitives in unique ways.

In this course, you will learn foundational layout primitives that you can use to build many of your more complex layouts. You will also learn 
how to apply the principle of "Encapsulated CSS" to both extend these primitives as well as to create custom layout primitives. To do this, we 
will recreate many of the layouts found in the wild using the principles mentioned above.

This course does not require extensive knowledge of CSS. It does assume that you have a basic understanding of the CSS box model, CSS specificity, 
CSS selectors, and CSS sizing units. Though you can apply the principles in this course to any modern web framework, including no framework 
development, this course will be using React and assume you have a basic understanding of React, JSX, and React hooks.

Composing Layout in React is for both novice and experienced developers who want to take their layout skills to the next level. This course will 
teach you the practical skills you need to build modern layouts for the web without depending on heavy CSS frameworks. Unlike courses and blog 
posts that teach each layout property in isolation, our product teaches practical layout patterns that you can use every day when solving your 
layout challenges.

In this course we show you how to build complex layouts in React by composing just a few foundational layout primitives.
Along the way you will learn modern CSS Layout tools like Normal Flow, Flexbox, and Grid.

Composing Layouts in React

What it means to compose layouts and why you should do it

How to apply the principles of Encapsualted CSS in our React components

The foundational layout primitives that every developer should know

Up until relatively recently, CSS technically only supported one form of layout: Normal Flow. Developers have been hacking around this for years using tables and floats, but this often had frustrating problems since you were using tools in a way that they weren't designed. Though it is very impressive what these early innovators were able to do, it required you to use a framework, like bootstrap or foundation, to lay out anything consistently on the web.

Luckily for us, this is no longer the case. CSS now has two layout options: CSS Grid and CSS Flexbox. In this lesson, we will be learning the basics of Grid and Flexbox and how to use them in a composable way.

, it does two things. First, that element becomes a "grid container." Second, all the direct children, and only the direct children, become "grid items."

    //grid-container
    <div style={{ display: "grid" }}>
      <div /> {/* grid-item */}
      <div>
        <div /> {/* not a grid-item */}
        <div /> {/* not a grid-item */}
      </div>
    </div>

In the grid container element, you can define tracks of columns and rows. Column and row sizes can be defined either explicitly, or implicitly, by allowing Grid to determine their height or width. The browser then places the grid items in these tracks for us, flowing left to right and then top to bottom to fill up one row at a time.

In the above example, we have created two column tracks of width 

The first two items are placed in the two columns on the first row track, which we set to be 

 property. The next two items are placed in the second row track, which we set as 

Finally, since there are no more explicit tracks defined after that, an implicit row is created for the next two items with an 

 height set as default. Since the tallest box in that row is 

CSS Grid also allows you to define gaps between your row and column tracks. The 

 prop will put margin only between the grid items, but not between the grid items and the grid container itself. This creates the much-coveted gutters effect with a single line of CSS.

---
title: CSS Grid vs Flexbox for Composable Layouts
slug: composable-flexbox-grid
description: You will learn the basics of CSS Flexbox and CSS Grid, especially which properties conform to the Encapsulated CSS principles and which ones do not.
isPublicLesson: false
privateVideoUrl: https://fullstack.wistia.com/medias/tsv4zfinyy
useMdx: true
---

Up until relatively recently, CSS technically only supported one form of layout: Normal Flow. Developers have been hacking around this for years using tables and floats, but this often had frustrating problems since you were using tools in a way that they weren't designed. Though it is very impressive what these early innovators were able to do, it required you to use a framework, like bootstrap or foundation, to lay out anything consistently on the web.

Luckily for us, this is no longer the case. CSS now has two layout options: CSS Grid and CSS Flexbox. In this lesson, we will be learning the basics of Grid and Flexbox and how to use them in a composable way.

## CSS Grid basics

When you set an element's `display` property to `grid`, it does two things. First, that element becomes a "grid container." Second, all the direct children, and only the direct children, become "grid items."

```jsx { actualFilename=./protected/grid-example.jsx endLine=15 startLine=8 url=https&#x3A;//gitlab.com/fullstackio/books/composing-layouts-in-react/module_01/lesson_01.04/protected/grid-example.jsx#L8 }
    //grid-container
    <div style={{ display: "grid" }}>
      <div /> {/* grid-item */}
      <div>
        <div /> {/* not a grid-item */}
        <div /> {/* not a grid-item */}
      </div>
    </div>
```

In the grid container element, you can define tracks of columns and rows. Column and row sizes can be defined either explicitly, or implicitly, by allowing Grid to determine their height or width. The browser then places the grid items in these tracks for us, flowing left to right and then top to bottom to fill up one row at a time.

We could write something like this:

```jsx { actualFilename=./protected/grid-example.jsx endLine=34 startLine=21 url=https&#x3A;//gitlab.com/fullstackio/books/composing-layouts-in-react/module_01/lesson_01.04/protected/grid-example.jsx#L21 }
    <div
      style={{
        display: "grid",
        gridTemplateColumns: "30px 100px",
        gridTemplateRows: "30px 200px",
      }}
    >
      <Box color="red" /> {/* 30 X 30 */}
      <Box color="orange" /> {/* 30 X 100 */}
      <Box color="yellow" /> {/* 200 X 30 */}
      <Box color="green" /> {/* 200 X 100 */}
      <Box color="teal" /> {/* auto X 30 */}
      <Box style={{ height: "20px" }} color="blue" /> {/* auto X 100 */}
    </div>
```

And it would look like this:

![Example of grid tracks](https://d2uusema5elisf.cloudfront.net/courses/composing-layouts-in-react/module_01/lesson_01.04/public/assets/grid-example.png)

In the above example, we have created two column tracks of width `30px` and `100px` and two row tracks of height `30px` and `200px`.

The first two items are placed in the two columns on the first row track, which we set to be `30px` high based on the first value in the `gridTemplateRows` property. The next two items are placed in the second row track, which we set as `200px` high based on the second value in the `gridTemplateRows` property.

Finally, since there are no more explicit tracks defined after that, an implicit row is created for the next two items with an `auto` height set as default. Since the tallest box in that row is `20px`, the whole row will be `20px`.

CSS Grid also allows you to define gaps between your row and column tracks. The `gap` prop will put margin only between the grid items, but not between the grid items and the grid container itself. This creates the much-coveted gutters effect with a single line of CSS.

You will learn the basics of CSS Flexbox and CSS Grid, especially which properties conform to the Encapsulated CSS principles and which ones do not.

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Composing Layouts in React

Module 1: Introduction

Introduction:

Start Here

Introduction: (2:30)

Welcome to Composing Layouts in React

Module 2: Composable Layouts

Lesson 1: (2:14)

CSS in the Age of Components

Lesson 2: (5:33)

What is Layout Composition? A React Layout Primitives Guide

Lesson 3: (8:53)

Encapsulated CSS - How to Apply CSS in a Composable Way

Lesson 4: (8:42)

Normal Document Flow in HTML, CSS, and React

Lesson 5: (6:27)

CSS Grid vs Flexbox for Composable Layouts

Lesson 6: (5:40)

How to Add a CSS Reset to Remove Default Browser Style

Module 3: Layout Primitives - The Spacers

Lesson 1: (2:02)

What are Layout Spacers?

Lesson 2: (17:07)

How to Build a Stacked Component Layout in React

Lesson 3: (14:21)

How to Build a Split Pane Layout in React

Lesson 4: (18:25)

How to Build React Grid Layouts With Custom Column Numbers

Lesson 5: (11:04)

How to Build a React Responsive Grid Layout

Lesson 6: (12:27)

How to Build Responsive React Text Elements With InlineCluster

Lesson 7: (23:22)

How to Add Inline Styling to React Components

Module 4: Layout Primitives - The Wrappers

Lesson 1: (2:39)

Introduction to Layout Wrapper Primitives

Lesson 2: (13:44)

How to Build a Pricing Page Widget in React With PadBox

Lesson 3: (14:27)

Automatically Center Text DIVs with React Center Component

Lesson 4: (19:59)

Resize Images And Maintain Aspect Ratio in React and CSS

Lesson 5: (17:14)

How to Vertically Center a DIV in React With CSS

Lesson 6: (8:54)

How to Build Accessible Navigation Divs in React

Module 5: Composing Layouts in Practice

Lesson 1: (1:32)

Introduction to The Settings Pages

Lesson 2: (24:10)

How to Build a React Navbar With a Menu and Header

Lesson 3: (16:17)

How to Build a React Sidebar Menu

Lesson 4: (20:05)

How to Build a Profile Settings Page in React

Lesson 5: (14:05)

How to Build a Privacy Page with Toggle Buttons in React

CSS Grid vs Flexbox for Composable Layouts