CSS Grid and Flexbox, v2 vs Complete Intro to React v9

Covers responsive layout across two parts — Flexbox (grid systems, navigation, responsive images) and CSS Grid (Mondrian and magazine layouts, cards). Reviewers say it teaches modern layout "without hacks", though v2 predates subgrid and container queries.

Jen Kramer is the most-praised element — a long-time CSS educator who explains layout clearly and at a beginner-friendly pace. Learners and a Hacker News commenter call her CSS courses "very good" and her teaching "well taught, in-depth".

Requires a $39/month (or $390/year) Frontend Masters subscription rather than a one-time purchase — strong value if you use the wider catalog, weaker if you only want this one course. The course is included in the standard subscription.

More hands-on than most CSS courses: each section ends in build exercises and a capstone, including a Mondrian painting and magazine layouts. The builds are small practice pieces rather than a full portfolio site, but they reinforce the concepts well.

Flexbox and Grid are the everyday tools for production layout, and learners report finishing real site layouts noticeably faster afterward. The main gap is currency — the newer features (subgrid, container queries) are covered in Kramer's v3, not this version.

v9 covers React 18 and 19 features (form actions, Suspense, the React Compiler) plus a modern Vite + TanStack Router + TanStack Query stack. Praised for currency, with a minority of long-term Frontend Masters subscribers flagging that other courses in the catalog can drift.

Brian Holt is the most consistently praised aspect across nine years of Hacker News mentions. Learners use words like 'excellent', 'great', and 'brilliant'. His pet adoption project framing is repeatedly cited as memorable.

Requires a Frontend Masters subscription (currently $39/month), which is consistently described as worth it if you complete more than one course per month. Less competitive against free alternatives if you only want a single React intro.

The single build-along project (an e-commerce app in v9, evolved from the pet adoption app of earlier versions) is praised for being non-trivial and integrating real ecosystem tools (TanStack Query, Vitest) rather than toy examples.

Holt spends real time on tooling (Vite, ESLint, Prettier, code-splitting, Vitest) and modern ecosystem choices, which is the single most-cited reason people say his courses transferred well to their day jobs.