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Layout

Layout components enable the creation of composable layouts. The main guiding principle is that space between elements "belongs" to their container. In other words, components never define any space outside their own boundaries. This allows for precise control of the spacing and makes components truly re-usable in different spacing contexts.

The design system provides a set of layout components, that can be arbitrarily nested inside each other to create complex layouts:

  • Stack
  • Inline
  • Columns
  • Inset
  • ContentBlock
Credits

🙏 The design of Layout components is heavily inspired by the Braid Design System and the Rainbow Design System

Spacing​

The design system defines a standard spacing scale which applies across all components. Valid values are:

0
4
8
12
16
24
32
40
80

Stack​

Stack is a layout component that arranges its children vertically.

You can control the vertical space between children with the space prop, which accepts finite set of values as defined by the spacing scale.

Stack can also control the horizontal alignment of its children with the align prop:

The space and the align props also supports defining their values depending on the breakpoint. For example, you can define different align values on desktop and on mobile:

tip

Try resizing the browser window to see how the alignment changes.

info

If you specify only some breakpoints, e.g. mobile and desktop, they will "inherit" from the breakpoint immediately "above". For example, if you specify mobile and desktop, the tablet breakpoint will inherit from the desktop value.

Stack can also optionally render horizontal dividers in between its children using the dividers prop:

Inline​

Inline can be used to create horizontally flowing layouts, which wrap across multiple lines if necessary.

The spacing between children can be controlled with the space prop, which is also applied between rows.

Inline can control the horizontal and vertical alignment of its children with the align and alignY props respectively.

Similarly to Stack, space, align and alignY can be defined depending on the breakpoint:

tip

Try resizing the browser window to see how the alignment changes.

Inline can also automatically collapse its children into a single column when the screen is below a certain breakpoint. This is achieved using the collapseBelow property.

Here's an example of a layout where the children are collapsed and centered only on mobile:

Inline can also render its children in reverse dom order: this may be useful in case you want to preserve the DOM order for accessibility (e.g. tabbing using a keyboard respects DOM order) but reverse the elements visually. For this you can use the reverse prop:

The reverse prop is also responsive, so you can apply the reverse visual ordering only for certain breakpoints, if needed.

Columns​

Columns is used to create horizontal layouts with a larger degree of flexibility with respect to Inline.

Columns share the space evenly by default, but it's possible to control the width of individual columns by using the Column component.

For example, here's a three-column layout where the two side columns occupy 1/5 of the available space each and the central column takes up the remaining space:

tip

Using Column without any props is equivalent to just passing its children directly.

Columns can also be sized according to their content, which is useful when you want a column to be as small as possible:

Similarly to Inline, Columns can also control the horizontal and vertical alignment of columns:

And again, space, align and alignY can be defined depending on the breakpoint and collapseBelow can be used to arrange columns vertically below a certain screen size:

Columns supports the same reverse property as Inline. This is particularly usefor for implementing layouts where you have columns that you want to collapse in reverse DOM order. Here's an example where the sidebar moves above the main content when collapsing below the desktop breakpoint:

Tiles​

Sometimes you may need to control the number of columns but also allow wrapping, to create grid-like layouts. This can't be achieved with Inline (becuase it doesn't control the number of columns), nor Columns (because it does not allow wrapping).

In such cases, you can use the Tiles component, which lays out its children in a fixed number of columns, wrapping if necessary:

The column and space props can be set responsively, so you can adapt the layout based on the active breakpoint. For example, here's how to render 4 columns on desktop, 2 on tablet and 1 on mobile:

Inset​

Inset is used to create a container with equal padding on each side:

Horizontal and vertical padding can be set independently using the spaceX and spaceY props:

ContentBlock​

All components span the entire width of their container by default. In some cases, though, you may want to cap their width: this is usually the case when working with page layouts or with long text paragraphs.

In such cases, you can use ContentBlock to limit the maxWidth and optionally center the content in the parent container.

For example, here's how to limit the width of long a paragraph of text to 700px, so that it stays readable:

Another example is capping the maxWidth of the entire page content, and centering it: