CSS has had a layout-shaped hole at its center since the beginning. Designers have bent features such as float and clear to help fill that hole, but nothing has quite done the job. Now that’s about to change. With this concise guide, you’ll learn how to use CSS grid layout, a generalized system that lets you lay out pieces of your design independent of their document source order and with full awareness of the overall design.

Short and deep, this book is an excerpt from the upcoming fourth edition of CSS: The Definitive Guide. When you purchase either the print or the ebook edition of Grid Layout in CSS, you’ll receive a discount on the entire Definitive Guide once it’s released. Why wait? Learn how to make your web pages come alive today.

• Explore the differences between grid boxes and block containers
• Create block-level grids, inline grids, and even nest grids inside grids
• Learn best practices for attaching elements to your layout, using explicitly defined grid lines or grid area
• Understand how the implicit grid automatically adjusts for oversized elements
• Create gutters between grid elements, and align and justify individual items

Eric A. Meyer is an author, speaker, blogger, sometime teacher, and co-founder of An Event Apart. He’s a two-decade veteran of the Web and web standards, a past member of the W3C’s Cascading Style Sheets Working Group, and the author of O’Reilly’s CSS: The Definitive Guide.