Grid auto-fit vs explicit columns, which one did you settle on?

I spent the last two weeks rebuilding a product page and kept flip flopping between auto-fit and declaring explicit column counts. Auto-fit felt so smart on paper, like it would just handle anything I threw at it. But then I tested it with a long product name on a narrow screen and the whole layout turned into a mess of tiny stretched cells. Going back to explicit columns with a media query fixed it in about 20 minutes. I still see people swear by auto-fit for quick prototypes, and I get the appeal. But for anything where the content length varies a lot, I'm now leaning toward writing out the columns. Has anyone else hit a similar wall, or do you have a rule for when auto-fit actually earns its keep?

2 comments

2 Comments

kellyj2317d ago

Explicit columns every time, auto-fit burned me on long titles too.

burns.brooke17d ago

Nah, I gotta disagree with @kellyj23 on this one, auto-fit has saved me way more time than explicit columns ever did, you just gotta set a minmax() with a sane min width and it handles long titles like a champ.