Skip to main content

Your submission was sent successfully! Close

Thank you for signing up for our newsletter!
In these regular emails you will find the latest updates from Canonical and upcoming events where you can meet our team.Close

Thank you for contacting us. A member of our team will be in touch shortly. Close

  1. Blog
  2. Article

Canonical
on 22 February 2013


When designing an app, an important thing to consider in your app is how to display content.

In our design guidelines, we have provided three standard views: Grid, List and Full screen which we think will cover most situations.

Grid view

Content divided into rows and columns is referred to as a grid view.

  • The grid view extends vertically.

List view

Content divided into rows is referred to as a list view and can attain a variety of appearances and behaviours.

  • The list view extends vertically.
  • List items can be grouped and styled differently.

Thinking of using this one? Look at the “List items” building block.

Full screen view

When a single piece of content is the main focus of the user’s attention, you should consider displaying the content in full screen view using the full screen layout.

This view looks like it needs some navigation

To navigate back to the previous view, use the page stack navigation structure.

And what about scrolling?

Scrollbars are hidden until you actually need them, so they appear on touch. The scrollbar is applied automatically whenever there is content out of view.

Ask us about content views!

Join our mailing list. We’d love to hear from you!

Related posts


Maximilian Blazek
6 November 2024

Designing Canonical’s Figma libraries for performance and structure

Design Article

How Canonical’s Design team rebuilt their Figma libraries, with practical guidelines on structure, performance, and maintenance processes. ...


Julie Muzina
13 August 2024

Visual Testing: GitHub Actions Migration & Test Optimisation

Design Article

What is Visual Testing? Visual testing analyses the visual appearance of a user interface. Snapshots of pages are taken to create a “baseline”, or the current expectation of how each page should appear. Proposed changes are then compared against the baseline. Any snapshots that deviate from the baseline are flagged for review. For example ...


Ana Sereijo
19 April 2024

Let’s talk open design

Design Article

Why aren’t there more design contributions in open source? Help us find out! ...