CSS Grid Generator

Writing grid-template-columns, grid-template-rows, and grid-template-areas by hand requires keeping a mental picture of the layout while typing tokens like 1fr minmax(200px, 1fr) auto. Mistype one column and the whole layout shifts — but the error is silent.

The visual configuration here lets you set column and row tracks, drop named areas onto the grid, and watch the generated CSS update. Output includes both the modern grid-template-areas syntax (named areas mapped to a string grid) and the grid-column/grid-row line-based syntax for browsers or use cases where named areas aren't preferred.

Good for laying out dashboard shells, magazine-style content grids, and any layout where the cell-to-content mapping is more complex than a column count. The generated code uses standard properties and works in every grid-supporting browser.

What the generator translates into is a small but expressive CSS grammar. The container declares grid-template-columns and grid-template-rows as track lists — values like 200px 1fr auto repeat(3, 1fr) — that define the grid lines. Children either implicitly flow into the next available cell, or are explicitly placed via grid-column/grid-row (using line numbers, names, or spans), or via grid-area (referencing the named-area template). The named-area form is what most non-trivial layouts use because it makes the visual structure readable in code: a string like "header header" "sidebar main" tells you exactly what's where without parsing line numbers.

A worked example: a typical app shell with a top bar, a left sidebar, a main content area, and a footer. Container: grid-template-columns: 240px 1fr; grid-template-rows: 64px 1fr 48px; grid-template-areas: "header header" "sidebar main" "footer footer". Children: header { grid-area: header } sidebar { grid-area: sidebar } main { grid-area: main } footer { grid-area: footer }. Six lines of CSS, infinitely more readable than the float/flexbox equivalent that did the same thing in 2014. The generator builds this from drag-and-drop and outputs the matching code.

Where grid runs out of usefulness is dynamic layouts where item count varies and items don't have fixed roles. A photo grid with N items isn't an "areas" problem — it's a repeat(auto-fill, minmax(...)) problem, where the browser decides how many columns fit and items flow naturally. Use auto-fill when you want empty tracks at the end (left-aligned grid), auto-fit when you want existing items to expand to fill available space (centered, justified). The two flags differ subtly and trip up everyone the first few times.

The interaction with subgrid is worth knowing if your CSS targets fairly modern browsers. Subgrid lets a child container align its own grid to the parent's lines — useful for nested cards where internal alignment should match across cards. Without subgrid, nested grids are fully independent, which means card titles, descriptions, and footers can land at different baselines across cards. Subgrid fixes that. The generator emits standard grid; subgrid is something you add manually for the specific cases that need it.