Skip to main content
  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


Nina Rojc
16 June 2026

Template: Streamlining open source design contributions

Design Ubuntu tech blog

As designers working at Canonical, we’re always thinking about open source. We believe that encouraging more designers to contribute to open source  benefits everyone, from the project maintainers to the end users themselves.   In the 2025 edition of FOSSBackstage conference, we presented our research findings on  why designers don’t get ...


Miguel Divo
22 May 2026

Decoding design: How design and engineering thrive together in open source

Design Ubuntu tech blog

Open source thrives on engineering-driven processes. Fast feedback loops, terminal tools, Git workflows: they’re the lifeblood of how we build software in the open. But for software to truly excel, we need to create user experiences that empower people to use them. I wanted to bring this conversation into the spotlight as part of Canonica ...


Johann Wolf
27 April 2026

Why web engineering is great

Ubuntu Ubuntu tech blog

Hi, I’m Johann! I’m an engineering manager in Canonical’s web team. For the larger part of my 15 years of work experience as engineer, I’ve been working in web development. Like many software engineers, one of my first software development experiences started with creating my own web page. Since that time almost 25 years ago, ...