Responsive Styling

What is Responsive Styling?

Responsive styling is an approach to web development that adjusts layout and appearance based on the device's viewport size or an element's container size.

Read more about the history of Responsive Design.

Container-based vs. Viewport-based Responsive Styling

There are two approaches to responsive styling:

1. With container-based styling, we measure the size of the container an element is in and apply styles based on the size of that container. Note that a container's size can be affected by surrounding containers or the viewport size.
2. With viewport-based styling, we measure the size of the user's viewport and apply styles based on the size of that viewport.

Both approaches use breakpoints.

Canvas Breakpoints

Breakpoints are the points at which the styles will change to provide an optimal user experience. Think of a container element's or viewport's width as a range of possible sizes broken down into buckets (e.g., 0-319px, 320-767px, 768-1023px, etc).

Canvas uses the following breakpoints for both container-based and viewport-based responsive styling:

• zero: styles applied from 0px up until (but not including) 320px
• s: styles applied from 320px up until (but not including) 768px
• m: styles applied from 768px up until (but not including) 1024px
• l: styles applied from 1024px up until (but not including) 1440px
• xl: styles applied from 1440px and up

Container-based Responsive Styling

In the interactive example below, when the dropdown's value is updated, the container size will change to match the size shown in the dropdown.

This example uses the following hooks:

• useResizeObserver provides the width (and height) of the container.

• useResponsiveContainerStyles allows you to create container-based responsive styles with objects. This hook accepts three arguments: style objects, container width, and theme (optional). Each style object accepts keys corresponding to the following sizes: zero, s, m, l and xl. These sizes represent Canvas breakpoints. The sizes act like min-width. For example, if you want to apply styles from medium and up, then you would write those styles under m.

Viewport-based Responsive Styling

The viewport is the user's visible area of a web page (varies with screen size).

We can use media queries to run a series of tests that will measure the screen size or resolution and apply CSS styles specifically to an element.

@media screen and (min-width: 800px) {
  .container {
    margin: 1em 2em;
  }
}

In the interactive example below, styles are applied based on the size of the user's viewport using two of our breakpoint utilities: up and down. Adjust the width of your browser to see the layout adjust to the available width.

Breakpoint Utilities

We have four utilities to apply viewport-based responsive styling: up, down, between, and only. Each has a specific role in applying viewport-based responsive styles.

up

up returns a media query above the min-width for the range of a given breakpoint. Given a start breakpoint key ("zero", "s", "m", "l", "xl"), this function returns a media query (string) using a min-width. See example below.

import {useTheme} from '@workday/canvas-kit-react/common';
import {space} from '@workday/canvas-kit-react/tokens';
const theme = useTheme();
const {up} = theme.canvas.breakpoints;
const mediaQuery = up('l'); // Returns '@media (min-width: 1024px)'
const styles = {
  [mediaQuery]: {
    padding: space.m,
  },
};

down

down returns a media query below the max-width for the range of a given breakpoint. Given an end breakpoint key ("zero", "s", "m", "l", "xl"), this function returns a media query (string) using a max-width.

Note: This function subtracts 0.5px from the next breakpoint value to prevent collisions. For example, breakpoints.values.s, has a min-width of 320px, and the max-width is 767.5px). If the xl breakpoint is provided, this function returns a media query with only a min-width of 0, as seen in the second example below.

import { useTheme } from '@workday/canvas-kit-react/common';
import { space } from '@workday/canvas-kit-react/tokens';
 *
const theme = useTheme();
const { down } = theme.canvas.breakpoints;
const mediaQuery = down('m'); // Returns '@media (max-width: 1023.5px)'
const styles = {
  [mediaQuery]: {
    padding: space.m,
  }
};

This example uses the xl breakpoint and only adds a min-width of 0 to the media query.

import {useTheme} from '@workday/canvas-kit-react/common';
import {space} from '@workday/canvas-kit-react/tokens';
const theme = useTheme();
const {down} = theme.canvas.breakpoints;
const mediaQuery = down('xl'); // Returns '@media (min-width: 0)'
const styles = {
  [mediaQuery]: {
    padding: space.m,
  },
};

between

between returns a media query between two given breakpoints. Given start and end breakpoint keys ("zero", "s", "m", "l", "xl"), this function returns a media query (string) using a min-width and max-width.

Note: This function subtracts 0.5px from the next breakpoint value to prevent collisions. For example, breakpoints.values.s, has a min-width of 320px, and the max-width is 767.5px).

If the xl breakpoint is provided, this function returns a media query with only a min-width, as seen in the second example below.

import {useTheme} from '@workday/canvas-kit-react/common';
import {space} from '@workday/canvas-kit-react/tokens';
const theme = useTheme();
const {between} = theme.canvas.breakpoints;
// Returns '@media (min-width: 320px) and (max-width: 1023.5px)'
const mediaQuery = between('s', 'm');
const styles = {
  [mediaQuery]: {
    padding: space.s,
  },
};

This example uses xl as the end breakpoint and only adds a min-width to the media query.

import {useTheme} from '@workday/canvas-kit-react/common';
import {space} from '@workday/canvas-kit-react/tokens';
const theme = useTheme();
const {between} = theme.canvas.breakpoints;
const mediaQuery = between('m', 'xl'); // Returns '@media (min-width: 768px)'
const styles = {
  [mediaQuery]: {
    padding: space.s,
  },
};

only

only returns a media query with a min-width and max-width for a given breakpoint. Given a breakpoint key ("zero", "s", "m", "l", "xl"), this function returns a media query (string) using a min-width and max-width.

Note: This function subtracts 0.5px from the next breakpoint value to prevent collisions. For example, breakpoints.values.s, has a min-width of 320px, and the max-width is 767.5px).

If the xl breakpoint is provided, this function returns a media query with only a min-width of 1440px, as seen in the second example below.

import {useTheme} from '@workday/canvas-kit-react/common';
import {space} from '@workday/canvas-kit-react/tokens';

const theme = useTheme();
const {only} = theme.canvas.breakpoints;
const mediaQuery = only('s'); // Returns '@media (min-width: 320px) and (max-width: 767.5px)'
const styles = {
  [mediaQuery]: {
    padding: space.s,
  },
};

This example uses the xl breakpoint and only adds a min-width of 1440px to the media query.

import {useTheme} from '@workday/canvas-kit-react/common';
import {space} from '@workday/canvas-kit-react/tokens';

const theme = useTheme();
const {only} = theme.canvas.breakpoints;
const mediaQuery = only('xl'); // Returns '@media (min-width: 1440px)'
const styles = {
  [mediaQuery]: {
    padding: space.s,
  },
};