I got this exact question in an email the other day, and I thought it would make a nice blog post because of how wonderfully satisfying this is to do in CSS these days. Plus we can sprinkle in polish to it as we go.
HTML-wise, I’m thinking image, text, image, text, etc.
<img src="..." alt="..." height="" width="" />
<p>Text text text...</p>
<img src="..." alt="..." height="" width="" />
<p>Text text text...</p>
<img src="..." alt="..." height="" width="" />
<p>Text text text...</p>If that was our entire body in an HTML document, the answer to the question in the blog post title is literally two lines of CSS:
body {
display: grid;
grid-template-columns: min-content 1fr;
}It’s going to look something like this…
So cool. Thanks CSS. But let’s clean it up. Let’s make sure there is a gap, set the default type, and reign in the layout.
body {
display: grid;
padding: 2rem;
grid-template-columns: 300px 1fr;
gap: 1rem;
align-items: center;
max-width: 800px;
margin: 0 auto;
font: 500 100%/1.5 system-ui;
}
img {
max-width: 100%;
height: auto;
}
I mean… ship it, right? Close, but maybe we can just add a quick mobile style.
@media (max-width: 650px) {
body {
display: block;
font-size: 80%;
}
p {
position: relative;
margin: -3rem 0 2rem 1rem;
padding: 1rem;
background: rgba(white, 0.8);
}
}
OK, NOW ship it!
Eh… use figure and figcaption, maybe? So the text can be related to the image?
If the text is connected to the separate images, wouldn’t this be a good usecase for figure and figcaption?
Something along the lines of:
But then the grid layout needs to be redefined
ya maybe. If the text is very literally a caption for the image, sure. I wouldn’t say it always has to be (thinking of a list of features where the image is just an arbitrary icon or screenshot or something, and the text isn’t really a caption for it.)
Once you have a wrapper like that “in the way”, this becomes a compelling reason that subgrid exists!
You can also add a box-shadow:20px 15px green;
to put a drop shadow on an image. Only if it looks good.
Have you ever thought about the fact that if we use a negative margin on the elements that reside below the replaced elements (e.g.
<img>) like as in this particular example, we have to create a new stacking context for the element that we use a negative margin on? Otherwise the background of the<p>will be below the<img>tag.As in this case, we have to add
position: relative;(or it can beopacity: 0.99;, etc…) to the<p>even though it locates below the image in the DOM.On the other hand, if we change the
<img>to, say,<div>in won’t be necessary and we can use negative margin without creating a new stacking context.I thought the purpose of the mobile styles (in this case) was to create a stacking effect between the image and the corrosponding paragraph? So in this case should a new stacking context reasonable?