CSS tip: object-fit your images.

To have an image that doesn’t try to stretch to its width/height the classic CSS is as follows:

.thumbnail {
  width: 50px;
  height: 50px;
  background-size: cover;
  background-position: center;
}

With this associated HTML (inline styles… 👎):

<div
  class="thumbnail"
  style="background-image: url('some-url');"
>
</div>

We can do:

.thumbnail {
  width: 50px;
  height: 50px;
  object-fit: cover;
  object-position: center;
}

With the following HTML:

<img class="thumbnail" src="some-url">

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Why is this cool?

1. One word: accessibility.
2. Two words: semantic markup.
3. Many words, with the div + background-image solution:
   1. if the URL turned out to be broken, it would show empty space, with the img + object-fit one, it shows the good old “broken image because of URL” fallback (or alt attribute value).
   2. An img tag is more accessible since we can have alt
   3. Typing src="my-url" is just less characters than style="background-image: url('my-url')".

Warning: this might not work on older browsers, it does, however gracefully degrade (the image will just be stretched), it won’t mess up the layout though.

Nate Bell