Introduction to Composing Layouts in React

Welcome to Composing Layouts in React

Introduction

Using CSS in this age of components is difficult, especially where web layout is concerned.  In this module, you will learn the rules to be able to build composable layouts.

CSS in the Age of Components

Complex layouts can be broken down into smaller layout primitives that can be combined to build more complex structures.  Thinking compositionally will open up a more practical and reusable way of creating layouts on the web.

What is Layout Composition? A React Layout Primitives Guide

Knowing where to place your styles is critical to understanding composable layouts.  Using the Principles of Encapsulated CSS you will know exactly how to apply your layout styles in your components.

Encapsulated CSS - How to Apply CSS in a Composable Way

In the lesson, you will learn about Normal Flow and what patterns you can use to apply the principle of Encapsulated CSS in the context of Normal Flow.

Normal Document Flow in HTML, CSS, and React

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.

CSS Grid vs Flexbox for Composable Layouts

In this lesson you will learn how to reset the default browser styles so that they follow Encapsulated CSS.

How to Add a CSS Reset to Remove Default Browser Style

Composable Layouts

What are Layout Spacers?

The Stack layout pattern is one of the most simple and common layout patterns on the web.  In this lesson, you will learn how to build the Stack primitive and how to make it configurable for your situation

How to Build a Stacked Component Layout in React

The layout challenge that is as old as the web itself is putting two items next to each other. In this lesson, you will learn how to build the Split primitive to solve this problem.

How to Build a Split Pane Layout in React

Having a column-based grid system to lay our elements out on is very useful, which is why Bootstrap and other CSS frameworks are built on that model.  In this lesson, you will learn how to build the Columns primitive and its helper the Column to build your custom column layout.

How to Build React Grid Layouts With Custom Column Numbers

Building an inherently responsive grid of items has been reduced down into a single line of CSS.  In this lesson, you will learn how to build the Grid primitive that easily lets us achieve this layout.

How to Build a React Responsive Grid Layout

Text in a paragraph is one of the best examples of "responsive by default."  Text will wrap and cluster according to the text alignment.  In this lesson, we will learn how to achieve that same effect using the InlineCluster primitive.

How to Build Responsive React Text Elements With InlineCluster

Clustering is one way to do responsive inline layouts, but sometimes we want to switch the direction that the items are flowing when we cross a certain threshold.  In this lesson, we will learn how to build the Inline primitive that does just that.

How to Add Inline Styling to React Components

Layout Primitives - The Spacers

Introduction to layout wrapper primitives

Introduction to Layout Wrapper Primitives

In this lesson, you will learn how to build the PadBox primitive and use it in a Pricing Plan component.

How to Build a Pricing Page Widget in React With PadBox

In this lesson, we will be creating a Center layout primitive that centers itself and its children.

Automatically Center Text DIVs with React Center Component

In this lesson, we will build the Frame primitive, which frames out a visual media, like an image or video,  and forces it into the aspect ratio needed for the design without distorting the image.

Resize Images And Maintain Aspect Ratio in React and CSS

In this lesson, we will learn how to build the Cover primitive, which will vertically center its children and allow you to inject a top or a bottom section around it.

How to Vertically Center a DIV in React With CSS

Let's revisit the Hero section from Module 1 and build it for real using the primitives we have learned.

How to Build Accessible Navigation Divs in React

Layout Primitives - The Wrappers

Introduction to The Settings Pages

This lesson is going to focus on getting the menu and header completed on our mock Settings Page

How to Build a React Navbar With a Menu and Header

This lesson will focus on getting the main section with the sidebar navigation for our Settings page.

How to Build a React Sidebar Menu

In this lesson, we will be focusing on the profile pane.

How to Build a Profile Settings Page in React

In this lesson, we will be finishing the Settings page by completing the privacy pane.

How to Build a Privacy Page with Toggle Buttons in React

Composing Layouts in Practice

Bonus Lessons Introduction

In this lesson, you will learn how to build the ColumnDrop primitive and use it to layout BlogPost cards.

The ColumnDrop Component

The Reel Component

Bonus Lessons

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

We have entered the age of components. Most front-end frameworks, like React, use components as their foundation. There are several reasons for this, but crucially, components allow applications to be broken into simple, single-purpose parts that can then be composed together to solve more complex needs. This is especially true when considering the layout of your web application.

Unfortunately, CSS was invented to solve problems from the top down, 

from the general rules down to the more specific rules

. A typical CSS stylesheet is probably organized something like this:

/* General Styles */
body {
}

/* Sitewide */

.main-nav {
}

.footer {
}

/* More Specific */

.blog-feed {
}

.sign-up-form {
}

#first-name-input {
}

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title: CSS in the Age of Components
slug: css-and-components
description: Using CSS in this age of components is difficult, especially where web layout is concerned.  In this module, you will learn the rules to be able to build composable layouts.
isPublicLesson: false
privateVideoUrl: https://fullstack.wistia.com/medias/f68pq7h62g
useMdx: true
---

We have entered the age of components. Most front-end frameworks, like React, use components as their foundation. There are several reasons for this, but crucially, components allow applications to be broken into simple, single-purpose parts that can then be composed together to solve more complex needs. This is especially true when considering the layout of your web application.

## CSS was not designed for components

Unfortunately, CSS was invented to solve problems from the top down, [from the general rules down to the more specific rules](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/CSS/Building_blocks/Organizing#create_logical_sections_in_your_stylesheet). A typical CSS stylesheet is probably organized something like this:

Travis Waith-Mair

What's up guys, Travis here, and bringing you another lesson in composing

Today we're going to learn about CSS and the age of components.

See right now we've entered the age of components. Most front-end frameworks

like React use components as their foundation.

There are several reasons for this, but crucially, components of all

applications be broken into simple single-purpose parts

that can be composed together to solve more complex needs.

This is especially true when considering the layout of your web application.

Unfortunately, CSS was invented to solve problems from the top down, from

general rules down to more specific rules.

A typical CSS style sheet is probably organized something like this, with

general styles like your body up at the top.

More sight-wide, general rules like your main nav or footer, and then more

specific rules like your blog feed, post, your sign-up form, or your first name

On the other hand, components encourage you to start from the bottom up,

breaking your page down into more specific parts first, often in isolation from

and then composing them together to build up that whole.

The React docs even devote a whole section called Thinking in React that

These contradictory methodologies can lead to some frustrating decisions.

It can be difficult to compose your apps using lower level components, while

still using CSS, which expects you to know what you're building before you've

Many tools have been created to help us with this problem like SAS, less, CSS

They also have the problem of maintaining CSS style sheets, but they all fall

short in one problem that tooling can never solve.

And that is which component should be in charge of which styles.

The answer to this question is key to making composition work, especially where

By the end of this module, you will know the answers to this question, and you

can start composing layouts in your web app.