Hello, hey, before we get deeper into grids... let's talk about the difference between Grids, Constraints, and Auto Layouts... because they can be confusing, about when to use each of them... which is good for what, it's confusing because... they all share a similar sort of purpose, it's about responsiveness... and if I'm honest I've recorded this video about 10 times already...

trying to make it concise, and not me waffling on for, don't know, 15 minutes... "It's meant to be a recap, Dan," come on, recap... let's start with Auto Layouts. Auto layout, we already know... we can grab four different things and we can say, 'Shift A' for an auto layout... and it gives us some kind of responsiveness...

and it's more to do with the content, internally in our auto layout... as opposed to constraints and grids, that respond to the frame size... so if I've got a different desktop size, or a different phone model... the responsiveness that happens there are grids and constraints... auto layouts are more to do with what responds inside of my little group here... so I can go in and say, actually, this is, you know...

instead of Settings, it's Account, you see, it reflows, it's responsive... not to the outside frame, just to its inside bits... I can grab you, and go, you, and go... you, and responsiveness, excellent. The constraints though, which we've done, if I select on this and say... actually, I want you to be constraints of the left, and--  no, sorry, the right and the top...

it means that when I go and resize this Desktop... maybe for a Tablet view, can you see, it comes along for the ride... so it's responsive but it's more to do with the frame size... so you often use these two together. I can resize it, and I can go in here and say, actually, don't want Logout... I want Sign Out...

and the auto layout adjusts. So grids, why do we have them? They are visually useful, they just help you get consistent margins... consistent spacing between pages, on multiple pages... they have some other useful things, if I got this... you'll see, it snaps to it, which is great...

I can have consistent spacing between them all on different pages... I've already said that... and where it becomes super useful is it actually ties in with constraints... over here we said, you, constrained to the right and the top... what we can do with a grid is, we can say, you... I want to be constrained to the left and the right...

but it's not doing the entire frame, it's actually just doing the grid itself... why is that cool? Is that when you have a different size... we have a different size page... let's say it's a small page, look what happens, oh, look at that. So grids, tied with constraints...

means for a more consistent reflowing and responsive design... to say, how to put those three different things in their own little box... and can you see how they kind of like complement each other, hopefully... so when do you use each of them? So auto layouts, I got kind of like three levels, or four levels... and for your initial scrappy design we've got no idea what you're doing here...

you're just kind of getting things on the page, to get everything laid out... you don't need any of these... you don't need auto layout, or constraints, or grids, unless you want to... but often at that stage, there's so much flux and flow... you're just dragging things around and trying to get things in order... so concept stage, none of these are that useful...

when do they become useful? Kind of at different times... the grid, I find is useful... basically, once you've got that concept stage done, use grids... because it allows you to be consistent across your different designs... it's one of those things to get, that's kind of easy to get right...

you know, you know what kind of grid size you're going to use, how many columns... let's do that on all pages, awesome. Auto layout is another one that you can use early in your design... because you want to-- you're still adjusting things... you're removing things and moving them around... so you're still at a reasonable concept stage...

but it's a lot easier having an auto layout to reflow these things... than it is to be manually like turning them off and deleting them, getting the... you know, the spacing perfect between them all... so often, I use auto layouts early in my design process, after the concept... maybe after client approval... or maybe I'm just happy with my, say wireframe, or High Fidelity...

and I want to go a bit further. So grids, early, auto layouts, early, where I start worrying about constraints... is later on when I need to build out different sizes... so often I'll just work on one phone size... whatever the most typical generic sizes, to start with, same with the Desktop... but when I get closer to the end of my project...

where I actually have to figure out, what am I going to do for Tablet... what am I going to do for a big screen, for a little screen... for a Pro Max phone, or a tiny little Android one... that's when constraints become a lot more useful... so that's for me, and my different sizes... but also, if you're going out to other people...

so as soon as you have to give them to someone else you should probably decide... how these things constrain, so that they adjust the way that you imagine them. Wow, so that was a big waffly mess... but that was the big waffly mess I could come up with... I hope it did help a little bit... so my parting words are that...

auto layouts, constraints, and grids, don't have to be used at all... especially at the beginning... where they become useful is when you've got more than one page, multiple pages... and you want consistency because you've got a reasonably established design... and they're absolutely essential when you're working with other team members... or preparing things for yourself, to be used later on in future projects.

All right, I should have probably started with that... all right, that is the end of the video... "Let's go on to doing some stuff, Dan, stop talking."