5 CSS Tips & Tricks for better Responsive Web Design

Summary

This video covers five essential responsive web design techniques beyond Flexbox and Grid. It highlights the importance of relative padding, responsive font sizes, and how to make images adaptable on various devices. Viewport units are explored for better layout control, especially on mobile screens, and practical advice is provided for accessible and smooth transitions in hamburger menus. These techniques ensure your site looks great and performs seamlessly across all devices without relying heavily on media queries, making your design process more efficient and flexible.

Takeaways

• 😀 Use relative padding with the 'Min' function in CSS to create responsive padding without media queries.
• 😀 Use REM for font sizes instead of pixels to ensure scalability across devices.
• 😀 For responsive headings, combine viewport width (VW) with a clamp function to set minimum and maximum font sizes.
• 😀 Use the 'clamp' function to prevent headings from becoming too large on big screens or too small on mobile devices.
• 😀 To make heading fonts responsive to zooming, combine VW with zoomable units like REM.
• 😀 For responsive images, use 'max-width: 100%' and 'height: auto' to ensure images scale properly without distortion.
• 😀 Maintain consistent image dimensions using the 'aspect-ratio' property in CSS and control image display with 'object-fit'.
• 😀 To handle viewport height issues on mobile, use 'dvh' (dynamic viewport height) instead of 'vh' for accurate scaling.
• 😀 On smaller screens, avoid using 'display: none' for transitions. Instead, use 'opacity' or 'position' for smoother animations.
• 😀 Ensure accessible navigation menus by using the 'inert' attribute to hide elements from the accessibility tree during transitions.

Q & A

What is the main topic of the video?

The main topic of the video is responsive web design, focusing on techniques to make websites look good on every device, without relying on Flexbox or Grid.

What is the issue with padding on responsive websites?

The problem with padding is that it often needs to be specified differently for desktop and mobile screens. For example, padding that works well on a desktop may be too large for mobile devices.

How can you solve the padding issue without using media queries?

You can use the CSS Min function to provide a fixed value for desktop screens and a responsive value for smaller screens, allowing the padding to adapt automatically.

What is the recommended CSS unit for font sizes in responsive design?

The recommended CSS unit for font sizes in responsive design is REM, as it scales relative to the root font size, usually 16 pixels by default.

How do you handle font sizes for headings on different screen sizes?

To handle font sizes for headings, you can use the viewport width (VW) unit, combined with the clamp function to set a minimum and maximum font size, ensuring the heading looks good on both large and small screens.

What is the problem with using viewport width (VW) for font sizing?

The problem with using VW for font sizing is that it does not scale with zooming. If you zoom in or out using the mouse wheel, the text size does not adjust accordingly.

What is the solution for responsive images?

The solution for responsive images is to use a max-width of 100% and height set to auto in CSS, along with the aspect-ratio property to ensure images maintain consistent dimensions across devices.

What does the 'object-fit' property do for images?

The 'object-fit' property controls how an image fits within its container. The 'contain' value ensures the whole image fits, possibly leaving empty spaces, while 'cover' ensures the image fills the container but may crop parts of it.

What issue does the viewport height (VH) unit cause on mobile devices?

On mobile devices, the viewport height (VH) unit can cause issues because mobile browsers reserve space for UI elements like the address bar, making the height of an element set to 100VH appear larger than the screen, leading to unnecessary scrolling.

What is the new version of the viewport height unit introduced in CSS?

The new version of the viewport height unit is 'dvh', which accounts for UI elements in mobile browsers, ensuring that elements using this unit fit properly within the screen height on mobile devices.