Anchor Positioning Gets Its Own Practice Ground
If you’ve ever learned CSS layout through Flexbox Froggy or Grid Garden, you know the drill: a series of puzzles teaches you a layout system through hands-on repetition. Those games come from developer Thomas Park, who also runs the broader CodePip collection of front-end learning games. His latest addition is Anchoreum, aimed squarely at CSS Anchor Positioning.
Anchor positioning is still a young feature—currently supported only in Chrome and Edge—which makes this a timely release rather than a retread of an established technique. If you happen to be unfamiliar with the spec, Anchoreum doubles as a practical introduction while there’s still room to get comfortable before wider browser adoption kicks in.
Gameplay with a Museum Theme
Unlike the more literal scenarios in Flexbox Froggy or Grid Garden, Anchoreum sets you in a museum where your job is to attach label elements to the artifacts on display. The context is more abstract, but the exercises themselves get into the meat of the feature: tying target elements to anchors, working with multiple anchors at once, managing spans, and setting up position fallbacks.
The repetitive nature of the puzzles isn’t a downside—it’s what builds the muscle memory you’ll need when using anchor positioning in actual projects. Each level forces you to think about how the anchor and target relate, and the progression moves from straightforward placement into the trickier territory of fallback behavior.
Why Learn It Now
There’s an argument for waiting until a feature lands in all major browsers before investing time in learning it. But for a mechanism as novel as anchor positioning, jumping in early has its own payoff. The basics are already solid enough in Chrome and Edge to support the entire game, which means you can experiment interactively before the spec settles further.
If you're teaching or learning CSS, Anchoreum gives you a rare interactive resource for a feature that hasn't yet had time to accumulate a library of tutorials and exercises. For educators, it slots in nicely alongside the older layout games, providing a concrete way to introduce a modern positioning tool while the window for getting ahead of the curve is still open.
