This content originally appeared on Stefan Judis Web Development and was authored by Stefan Judis
Today I was tweeting about a new CSS property I discovered: place-items. It is a simple shorthand for – that's at least what I thought. It turns out that align-items and justify-contentplace-items is a shorthand for align-items and justify-items (thanks Benjamin, for pointing that out).
This discovery made me sad initially because it meant that I could not get rid of one CSS declaration in my flexbox based classes to center elements.
/* this class centers elements using flexbox
and is there to stay */
.center {
display: flex;
align-items: center;
justify-content: center;
}
After sharing my disappointment, Benjamin mentioned something that I didn't think of before. place-items works perfectly with display: grid.
How to center elements using CSS grid
Section titled How to center elements using CSS gridI have to admit that even when CSS grid is cross-browser supported nowadays, I didn't use it much yet. It turns out that you can use display: grid to center elements as quickly as when using flexbox.
Define display: grid on an element (see this CodePen as an example), pair the grid-declaration with align-items and justify-items and you're good to go! You just centered the child of this element.
<html>
<body class="center-using-grid">
<span>hello from a centered span</span>
</body>
</html>
.center-using-grid {
display: grid;
align-items: center;
justify-items: center;
}
align-items and justify-items define the align-self and justify-self properties on all direct grid children. Have a look at the devsheet below to learn about these CSS properties.
The nice thing about this approach; you can unify align-items and justify-items into a single declaration – place-items.
.center-using-grid-even-shorter {
display: grid;
place-items: center;
}
There are only two CSS declarations needed to center elements using CSS grid.
Is there a catch about centering elements using display: grid and place-items?
Section titled Is there a catch about centering elements using `display: grid` and `place-items`?
Well... kind of. place-items is not cross-browser supported yet (basically, it's Chrome and Firefox today), but fortunately, PostCSS has you covered so that you can use it today. ?
Edited November 2020: The browser support is way better now. ?
You can read more about place-items in the detailed MDN article about it.
Happy centering, and if you enjoyed this post don't forget to check out my other quick "Today I learned"-posts!
Reply to Stefan
This content originally appeared on Stefan Judis Web Development and was authored by Stefan Judis
Stefan Judis | Sciencx (2018-07-01T22:00:00+00:00) CSS grid will soon be the shortest way to center elements (#tilPost). Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2018/07/01/css-grid-will-soon-be-the-shortest-way-to-center-elements-tilpost/
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