Shadowing Practice: Handy CSS layout patterns, and fun ways to elevate them - Learn English Speaking with Video

Hello my friend and friend in this video we're gonna be looking at three layout patterns

that I use quite a lot that I think are useful

that I don't see used often enough and some cool tips and tricks along with using them.

Actually the second one is one that's common but there's a problem

that people run into with it that we're going to look at

but first let's look at this one which is an overflow scroller.

I recently did a workshop where I was talking about this

and a few people were like oh I use

so much javascript to do this so we're going to see how we can do it.

the css only way with like a few lines of code

so you can see here i have this overflow scroller with a bunch of cards in it

and i'm going to use grid you could definitely use flexbox for this

but i prefer grid because if we do it with grid the parent controls everything

which is always nice so we can do display grid a gap of one

and then the very underused grid auto flow and with

that i'm going to say that the auto flow is column

and i always forget i think this is columns

or was it column column singular it's always fun knowing with grid

if it's singular or plural and

that makes all of my cards turn into columns instead of creating rows

and change the the flow this is a little bit like changing the flex direction with the exception

that we can't have a flex wrap involved in it

but yeah our flow now creates columns and then what i can do is

because you know they're all different sizes which is kind of awkward

so now what i can do is a grid auto column

and we can control the size of the column

and this is columns plural and i know that one's plural

because this one's singular and that's how i remember it

and here i can just bring in a size

and we could do a lot of different things for this

size uh let's just say we could do something like 300

pixels i think we'll be fine i might make them a

bit bigger maybe for this layout actually it's okay we'll see uh

but you can see right now that's creating my my going

that way and i put gap one Let's make that one run.

But yeah, now we're now overflowing quite literally, which isn't what I want.

I want like an overflow scroller that's not causing the entire page to scroll.

So then I can just come on here and say that my overflow on the x-axis is going to be a scroll.

And in doing that, now we can see here I'm scrolling left and right, which not ideal maybe, but this is a very common pattern

that we see these days and where the real part of this comes in, because I guess this is enough.

I'm just holding shift down, by the way, to scroll sideways, which is the awkward part if you are on a desktop computer.

But on mobile, this is a very common thing with UI interfaces these days.

But the part that I want to look at really is once you've put this in place, is coming with scroll snapping.

And scroll snapping is definitely underused for these types of things, where we can just say that we have a scroll snap type.

and this is the part I always mix up.

I think you want to do the direction first.

So it'd be my inline axis in line or we could do X because we're on the X axis and then mandatory.

When you first do this, it's a little bit of a letdown.

I won't lie because you're going to try it and nothing is going to snap into place.

I actually thought I made a mistake at first here.

But what you want to do is combine the scroll snap type with selecting the children

and saying how they're going to align when they're snapped

and this is the perfect use case for nesting

because we can just do an ampersand

and then get the children with the star selector here uh

you don't actually need the ampersand you could also do it

like this i i just have this habit of putting the ampersand uh it's completely up to you

if you feel like this needs a comment you can just put select the children

so you know everybody knows what's going on

and then here what we're going to do is a scroll snap a line

and i'm going to say center for now you can do start you can do end we can do center

and if i do center you can see now it's going to grab the one in the middle

and it's going to center it so

when we are not the one in the middle but

when we get

when we scroll over it's going to snap the one that's

being snapped into the middle uh for this one i am

using a scroll snap type of mandatory there's also proximity for this i don't really like proximity

because it leaves like proximity leaves a little bit of leeway

so uh we'll let the page reload and then so now

when i'm going over actually it's still going to act very similar

but there is this like chance where things might not snap

into place i think in the way we're setting things up here it won't matter but

if you're doing something that's more based on like scrolling horizontally

with big sections proximity might be your better bet uh

because mandatory becomes a little bit aggressive i'm not a huge

fan of using scroll snap type for sections of content though it's a bit like scroll jacking

which can be a little bit annoying uh

so i'm going to change this one back to mandatory man da tory like

that and we're going to move on

but i do have a really cool trick

that we're going to show you I'm going to show you at the very end with this one

but it's not really related to layout patterns this is a really fun thing

that we can do with this that just makes it

so much cooler

but for now what I'm actually going to do is comment out this overflow scroller this entire section

so we can move on to my second layout

which is going to focus on similar cards that we have

but we're going to be doing auto grid

and I realize most people are familiar with auto grid So let's just go look here quickly at the HTML.

Same thing.

Auto grid, bunch of cards.

And the auto grid does have two choices.

So let's just come here and say that we have the auto grid.

I'm going to do a splay grid once again.

We're going to do a gap.

And as I said at the beginning, I think a lot of people are familiar with auto grid, but there's a gotcha with it that people run into issues with, which is why I want to look at it today.

And so this is going to be my grid template columns.

and the reason I'm saying autogrid is because I want to use the repeat and I want to use the autofit syntax.

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I'm going to drop this on another line just

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so we can see it all and for now I'm going to say autofit and just say 300 pixel.

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Let's do 200 pixels so we get a few more columns which means that it's automatically going to autogrid.

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I put it in the wrong place apparently.

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Let's go fix that.

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I named them both the same.

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Auto grid section will help alleviate that issue.

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So you don't normally see an auto fit with 200 pixels like this because it's kind of clunky, but it works.

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I mean, it automatically adds or removes columns if they're based on

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if there's enough room to squeeze in an extra 200 pixel column there.

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But we don't do that because it's kind of clunky.

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So usually what this is, is with a min max.

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And this is where things get a little bit interesting or more useful, I should say, but harder to remember.

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So I will give you the trick that I use on remembering the syntax here along the way as well.

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So for this min max, we're going to say this is we'll stick with the 200 pixels as our minimum.

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And then we're going to say one fr for the maximum, which just means it allows them to stretch.

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So it's exactly the same thing that we had before.

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But now those columns are kind of squishy.

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So they'll shrink down a little bit, then they fill up the space, then they, you know, it makes it responsive.

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And that's great.

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The problem with this layout is if you have a larger size here.

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And this larger size can cause overflow if the total space is below 400 pixels, right?

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Because we're saying the smallest these can get is 400.

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And the trick here is to put this all inside of a min, and this becomes 100%.

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So this is weird that we have a min inside a min max.

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Again, I'll give you the trick on remembering this and an easier way to write it in a second.

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But yeah, this works really well.

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And you can see it's exactly the same thing we had before, except now it's small sizes.

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It's using the 100%.

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And that's because it's going use whichever of these is smaller, is the 100% smaller, which it is right now.

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So use that.

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And then as soon as the parent is larger than 400 pixels, it switches over and it's now using that 400 pixels here instead of the 100%,

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which, yeah, I think is a nice win, but it's a little bit hard to remember.

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So really fast.

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Whenever you want to do this, you use the repeat and you don't know how many you want.

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So we just say auto figure it out for me.

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There's auto fit or auto fill.

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I default to auto fit.

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Pick one if it's the wrong one, pick the other one.

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And in this case right here, there is no difference anyway.

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So I'm going to do an auto fit comma.

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And then I know I need a min max.

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In my min max, I need a minimum value.

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So I'm to use a min function comma one fr

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so i don't forget it

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and then i don't have to worry about where the fr goes between all these closing braces

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because i i mix that up if not so we have the

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min max again min because i need a minimum value comma one fr

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and then i go in my minimum and i put a value

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that i want let's do 300 pixels this time and 100 and the only value that ever changes is this one.

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So the nice thing to do is say

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that we have a min call size of 300 pixels and use that custom property instead.

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And then this becomes var min call size like that makes it for an even longer declaration,

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which is, you know, it's a lot of a lot of code, I guess, for a single CSS declaration.

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But now we have the layout that is working exactly like we want it to.

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And it's very perfectly responsive, a nice intrinsic layout pattern right there.

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And you can just, you know, rinse and repeat this, use it anywhere you want

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and just change this min call size for the different values that you might need.

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So another one that I quite like.

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So let's get rid of this section now here

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and get into another one adaptive what does adaptive mean for

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this i'm also going to move the the heading off we'll comment this out

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so this is closer to the top and let's look at this

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so here i have this layout once again similar to before

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i actually have the auto grid uh in this section as well i believe auto grid is here

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or that doesn't really matter too much what matters right now is the uh this area here this active promotions

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which is this promo list that i have right here

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and it's inside of a section a sidebar section and

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so for this one we're going to be using container queries

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and container queries don't get enough love usage of them is

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very low browser support for them is very good now you

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can safely use container queries unless you really need to support some legacy browsers

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and what we're going to do is let's start with our promo list

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and the reason actually okay let's talk about the reason why

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I want to use a container query for this in the

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first place is right now this is in a narrow sidebar section

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and then as the viewport gets smaller we get to a wide area

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and then eventually it will get narrow as well

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and what I want to do with this one we have a bonus tip with this one too

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but what I want to do with this one is

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when there's enough room I want this active promotions to actually be three columns instead of stacking like this

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because it looks kind of ugly But when it's at this area, I want it to be stacked because that makes sense.

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And when it's over here, I want it to stay stacked because that would make sense.

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And using a media query for this is a nightmare because as the viewport gets wider, that area it has to live in gets smaller.

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So it doesn't really make sense to do this with a media query.

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So let's get that.

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That's my promo list.

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And I want to say an at container.

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And we can say our width or even inline size, but I'll do width in this case.

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is we're going to say if the width is larger than, let's try 500 pixels.

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We want it to be a grid template columns of repeat three one fr.

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I have some other styles floating around, but we can, let's just say display grid gap one rem, because this would sort of be what the pattern would be for this type of thing.

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And if we try this at first, it won't work.

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So we get to here, this is clearly bigger than 500 pixels, but we don't have three columns.

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The reason that's not working is because there is the side effect of having to have a container.

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And for this, the white border around here is my sidebar section.

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We have this aside.

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I call this sidebar content because we have first the sidebar, then the content.

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Maybe there's a better name for that.

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But yeah, sidebar content.

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I want to grab either the aside or the section itself.

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Either one of these would work perfectly fine so it's up to you which one you want to use.

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I like making the closest thing the container but the aside makes complete sense.

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If you'd rather the aside be a container that would work completely fine

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but I'm going to say that the sidebar section is a container type of inline size

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and in doing that when I make this smaller we get to here

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and then we get those three columns

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because this is clearly bigger than 500 pixels and as we get smaller then it wraps here as well.

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And yeah, so I think that works really well.

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It's an adaptive layout.

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It's able to change to where it's being used.

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I really like this for anything that might end up in a sidebar.

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And these types of patterns like this work really well.

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Much easier than trying to figure it out along the way with a media query and then having to readapt.

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And then the breakpoint changes and you have to have another breakpoint changing for the other thing.

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It's a little bit annoying.

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The only side effect here is we do need to declare our container type.

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But whatever, not the end of the world.

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And now just before we get to the bonus tips, including how we can do these interesting little cutout corners

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and a really fun effect for the first thing that I'd mentioned earlier, I do just want to quickly mention that this video is being brought to you by my course CSS Demystified, which I've built from the ground up

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and includes an entire module based on patterns that we're seeing here where we're looking at fluid,

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intrinsic, and responsive design patterns that go into a little bit like what we looked at in the previous example, as well as a deep dive into container queries, some useful patterns with them,

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some gotchas along the way, how we can overcome some of the gotchas, and yeah, just a deep dive into helping you learn how you can start writing CSS with confidence.

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So if you'd like to know more about that, there is a link just down below in the description.

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And with that, let's jump back into things

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and look at how we can do these little scoop out corners that are right here.

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Two bonus tips.

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I mentioned a few things along the way though.

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Now we're going to get into the fun stuff.

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So on my active promos here, let's go.

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That's my promo list.

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And then these are just LIs inside.

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So I could say that the LIs that are direct to children, which I had the ampersand before.

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So I'll use the ampersand again here where first I'm going to give these a border radius.

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So border radius, I'm going to say like, I don't know, I'm going to make it bigger than what I'd actually want uh

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so i probably whatever 16 yeah it's probably a little bit big uh actually well i'll leave it big

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so you can actually see what it is let's also change the border color

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because i think it a standout more border color can be white uh just

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so it highlights a bit more

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and then what i'm going to do is a corner shape of scoop

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which will now scoop out those corners nice right So corner shape is new.

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This is a progressive enhancement.

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If it doesn't work, then people get the border radius.

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And if it does work, then they get the scoop.

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And again, I think that's a little bit big.

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So we can drop that down to like an eight.

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And scoop, I'll put a link to more information on corner shape.

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You can do squircles, you can do scoops, you can do bevels and insets and all sorts of interesting things there.

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But I'm going to leave it with my little scoop there to make it look like a ticket

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or something that people are getting for their coupons.

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And the last one that I wanted to look at, which is one of my favorite new things is with scroll driven animations,

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which let's get this scroller turned back on all the way at the top here.

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And what we're going to do with this one is something very cool, at least in my opinion.

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I think this is the super amazing.

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So on my overflow scroller here, we have, you know, we scroll side to side and we can make this just, I don't know, so much more satisfying.

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where I'm trying to remember how I'm going to do this.

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So we need to create some keyframes for this.

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I'm going to say an at keyframes of, let's call it a scroller.

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And we're going to say at 0% and 100, comma, 100%.

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So when they're at like the extreme ends of the animation, we're going to give them an opacity.

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We're going to exaggerate this and then we'll make it look better.

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0.5 and let's give it a scale of 0.5 as well.

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So it's pretty substantial.

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and then what we're going to say is in the let's say like a 35 comma 65 does

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that make sense uh we're going to say that the opacity is one

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and the scale is one and

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that means the animation basically goes from zero to 35

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and then from 65 to 100 and we have that middle range where things will just always be at this, in between these two values,

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it will always be at the opacity and scale of one.

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Then I'm going to go on here where we have the scroll snap align.

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So I'm selecting the individual items that are snapping.

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And I'm going to say that they have an animation of scroller.

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I'll put the name.

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I'm also going to say that it's linear because if you don't use linear, maybe we don't need linear for this one.

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I'm not 100% sure, but I'm going to throw it on there anyway.

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and I'm also going to put the both keyword

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which just makes sure there we go we're currently now at the end of the animation

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so by putting both here

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if the animation is not currently running it means you know go to either the first

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or last keyframe depending on where you were

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so they're at the beginning of the animation right now

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which does not look fantastic but we can see

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that at least it's working but now we don't want to put a duration on here

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because that wouldn't make any sense so we can come in with an animation timeline

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and with the animation timeline we have two options

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one of them is scroll which is not what we want in this case

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and I think scroll won't work if we just do it like this

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so you can see it's actually broken

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if you do scroll it's defaulting to up and down

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so our horizontal vertical scrolling so

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if I want it to be based on horizontal scrolling I just do x

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and there we go it's now animating it

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but it's based on the entire way across that I have for this

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which I know the scroll bar is going a bit behind my head

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but as we sort of come across

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and then we come this way it's it's based on the entire scrolling distance

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that we have instead of scroll though i can use view

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and then it's gonna be based on the item's position in the view so now

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oh that's kind of better right i love it it's

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so nice uh and as i make

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that a bit wider we can start getting some of those ones

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that are further out we could even let's do opacity like 0.25 maybe we We want to really fade those out.

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And now, yeah, looks a little bit, I don't know.

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I find that I actually thought that I was exaggerating with these values, but it ended up working out pretty well.

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Where are I think pretty well, in my opinion.

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And you can play with the keyframes a little bit.

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But yeah, I thought that would be a fun way to sort of finish this one off.

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Less practical necessarily, but a way to elevate our design a little bit

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with just like a couple of extra lines of CSS.

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And yeah, if you are interested in CSS Demystified, do make sure to check out the link for that is right down in the description below.

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And with that, I want to say a very big thank you to my enabler of awesome Johnny, as well as all my other patrons and channel members for their monthly support.

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And of course, until next time, don't forget to make your corner of the internet just a little bit more awesome.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing Practice: Handy CSS layout patterns, and fun ways to elevate them - Learn English Speaking with Video

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