CSS Container Queries: A First Look + Demo

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Wanting to test Container Queries out I quickly threw a demo together using a classic card component. By default our component shows and image on top and a description below that. If enough space becomes available, they will be shown next to each other. Should even more space become available, then the image will grow even more.

In the recording below you can see the different layouts we want to achieve:

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The markup for all those cards is the same and is pretty straightforward. Only extra thing I’ve added is an extra wrapper div .animalcard-wrapper so that our container queries will play nice when being used inside CSS Grid

<div class="animalcard-wrapper">
	<div class="animalcard">
		<div class="animalcard__image">
			…
		</div>
		<div class="animalcard__description">
			…
		</div>
	</div>
</div>

The default layout of our card uses CSS Grid to position the image and the description:

/* SMALL LAYOUT: Image stacked on top of Description */
.animalcard {
	display: grid;
	grid-template: "image" "description" / 1fr;
	gap: 1em;
	padding: 1em;
}

To be able to use Container Queries, we first need to create a Containment Context (Container Root) on the .animalcard-wrapper. We instruct the browser to keep track of the inline-size, which translates to the width, as we will be changing the layout of its children based on that dimension.

/* Container Queries: Create Container Root */
.animalcard-wrapper {
	container-type: inline-size;
}

You can also name your container query if you want:

/* Container Queries: Create Container Root (Named) */
.animalcard-wrapper {
	container-type: inline-size;
	container-name: animalwrapper;
}

Or, as a shorthand:

/* Container Queries: Create Container Root (Shorthand) */
.animalcard-wrapper {
	container: inline-size / animalwrapper;
}

With this Container Root in place, we can now add extra styles to apply when the Container Root reaches a certain width

/* MEDIUM LAYOUT: Image next to Description (1fr each) */
@container (min-width: 30rem) {
	.animalcard {
		gap: 2em;
		padding: 2em;
		grid-template: "image description" / 1fr 1fr;
	}

	.animalcard__description {
		text-align: left;
	}
}

/* LARGE LAYOUT: Large Image next to Description */
@container (min-width: 70rem) {
	.animalcard {
		grid-template-columns: 2fr 1fr;
	}
}

By default it will be matched against the nearest parent that’s a container. If you want to explicitly target a different container, include its name when using @container:

/* MEDIUM LAYOUT: Image next to Description (1fr each) */
@container animalwrapper (min-width: 30rem) {
	…
}

If no parent container exists, the Small Viewport will be used.

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All together our demo finally becomes this:

See the Pen CSS Container Queries Demo by Bramus (@bramus) on CodePen.

😊

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