ordered-columns — Pinterest-style packed column layout
December 1, 2014
ordered-columns implements a packed column layout in the style of Pinterest. Home pages with cards or modules that vary in height often use this layout to pack the cards into columns: cards are assigned in order to whichever column is currently the shortest. Such a layout is quick to compute, produces visually engaging results, maximizes content that appears above the fold. It’s a useful responsive design pattern that scales well from small displays to very large ones. Many JavaScript libraries exist to implement this pattern, but this is a great example of a pattern that can be delivered as a web component.
Likes: Author Steven Skelton implements this column layout from the ground up as a Polymer web component. We see many, many web components that simply wrap an existing JavaScript library, and while that’s a fine way to start, it can also lead to bloat. He also provides good documentation and numerous examples.
Nits: The component only works with <article> elements (or elements with role=”article”); it would be nicer if it could work with any type of child element. The component also moves all the children from the light DOM (the outer page) to the component’s own shadow DOM. This effectively removes the children from the main page, complicating styling and the handling of events generated by the children.
Apologies that we were unable to get our demo working in IE. We try hard to ensure all demos work in all mainstream browsers, but after spending too much time wrestling with IE, we decided we’d rather publish this review than keep debugging. Our issue likely had more to do with our own blog-with-demos environment than with the ordered-columns component itself.