Styling the Intrinsic Web (With Cascade Layers & Container Queries)

A presentation at SmashingConf SF 2022 in in San Francisco, CA, USA by Miriam Suzanne

Over the last decade, Responsive Web Design and Object Oriented CSS have grown from exciting new trends into the foundations of modern, component-driven web design. But our medium is not done evolving.

In 2018, Jen Simmons coined this the era of “Intrinsic Web Design” – with powerful new tools that allow us to build entire layouts based on the intrinsic needs of each component.

This evolution of the responsive web is becoming more clear with several new features in CSS. We’ll look at a number of these developments, with a special focus on Cascade Layers (giving you control over your own cascade), and Container Queries (allowing components to respond to their immediate context). Not only do these features build on what we love most about responsive components, but they they’re designed to address some of the biggest challenges in CSS today.

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