CSS glossary entries for ‘G’
- Gecko
- Gecko is the name of a CSS rendering engine (‘layout engine’) used by several web browsers and other software applications. It is best-known for its use in the ‘Firefox’ browser.
- Gecko rendering engine
- See ‘gecko’
- grid
- The word ‘grid’ is used in at least 4 different senses in CSS design. In the broadest (natural language) sense a grid is a web page layout type that arranges elements in rows and columns. In a closely-related, but slightly narrower sense a grid is column-and-row based page layout in which column, row, and gutter boundaries always fall on specified ‘gridlines’ (see ‘grid systems’). In a third sense a grid is a column-and-row based page layout as specified in the CSS Grid Layout Module (see ‘grid layout module’). In a fourth, and very narrow, sense the word refers to the ‘grid property’ defined in the CSS Grid Layout Module.
- Grid Layout Module
- The CSS Grid Layout Module is component of the W3C's modular CSS3 standard. At the time of writing, it has the status of a ‘working draft’, i.e. the specification is liable to change and has only limited support in current browsers.
- Grid system
- A CSS grid system is software package which enables designers to easily create column-and-row based page layouts in which column, row, and gutter boundaries always fall on specified ‘gridlines’. The core of such grid systems is invariably a library of CSS ‘rules’ which ensures that container elements always begin and end on gridlines. Most contemporary grid systems are ‘responsive’ and are designed to work with CSS ‘preprocessors’, such as ‘Less’ and ‘Sass’. A small proportion of grid systems come bundled with, or bundled within, client- and server-side programming packages.
- Gridlines
- Gridlines are evenly spaced horizontal and vertical lines across a CSS web page layout. They are used to fit CSS ‘layout boxes’ to a ‘grid’. Gridlines may be rigidly spaced in pixel units, but are better spaced using proportional units of measurement: typically ‘percentages’ for horizontal distances and ‘em’ or ‘rem’ units for vertical distances. The gridlines themselves are rarely, if ever, rendered on the display of published websites, although they are frequently rendered on development versions of the site, i.e. for prototyping and debugging purposes.