Overflow Tilted Browse Card

Overflow tilted browse card

The effect is a rectangular tile with a small cover art rotated a few degrees and hanging off one corner, cut cleanly by the tile's rounded edge. Everything about it comes from two decisions: the parent clips, and the child is moved past the edge before it is rotated.

// adapted
Box(
    modifier = modifier
        .fillMaxWidth()
        .aspectRatio(2f)
        .clip(RoundedCornerShape(10.dp))          // must precede everything it should clip
        .angledGradientBackground(colors = gradientFromTitle(title), degrees = 45f)
        .drawBehind {
            // 2:1 tile, so anchor decoration on the HEIGHT (see Traps)
            val radius = size.height * 0.09f
            val centre = Offset(size.width - radius * 2f, radius * 2f)
            drawCircle(center = centre, color = Color.White, radius = radius)
            val badgeSize = Size(radius * 3f, radius * 3f)
            translate(centre.x - badgeSize.width / 2f, centre.y - badgeSize.height / 2f) {
                with(badge) { draw(badgeSize, alpha = 0.2f) }
            }
        }
        .clickable(onClick = onClick),
) {
    if (artworkUrl != null) {
        AsyncImage(
            model = artworkUrl,
            contentDescription = null,
            contentScale = ContentScale.Crop,
            modifier = Modifier
                .align(Alignment.BottomEnd)
                .offset(x = 8.dp, y = 12.dp)      // past the corner FIRST
                .size(64.dp)
                .rotate(25f)                      // then rotate
                .clip(RoundedCornerShape(2.dp)),  // clip inside the rotation
        )
    }
    Text(
        text = title,
        maxLines = 2,
        overflow = TextOverflow.Ellipsis,
        modifier = Modifier
            .align(Alignment.TopStart)
            .padding(start = 12.dp, top = 12.dp, bottom = 12.dp, end = 72.dp),
    )
}

Traps

The clip that produces the cut diagonal is the parent's, not the child's. offset moves where a child draws without changing what the parent measured, so the child genuinely hangs outside the tile — and the tile's clip is what turns that overhang into a diagonal edge. Remove the parent clip and the same code renders as a square photo pasted over the neighbouring tiles.

Modifier order decides which of the two clips wins. Modifiers wrap left to right, so the leftmost draws outermost. On the child, rotate then clip means the rounded corners are applied inside the rotation and turn with the art; clip then rotate applies an axis-aligned rounded rectangle over the already-rotated image and slices its corners off — the classic "why is my tilted image chamfered". On the parent, the clip must come before the background and drawBehind it is meant to contain, or those paint square corners outside it.

Rotation does not change the measured size, so every neighbour's spacing is your arithmetic. The parent still lays the child out as an s × s box; only the drawing turns. A square of side s rotated by θ occupies an axis-aligned box of side

s · (|cos θ| + |sin θ|)

which for 64 dp at 25° is 64 × (0.906 + 0.423) ≈ 85 dp — about 10.5 dp further out on every side than the box the layout system knows about, since the growth s(|cos θ| + |sin θ|) − s is split between the two edges. Combine that with the outward offset to get the real intrusion: aligned to the bottom-end corner and pushed 8 dp past it, the art's left extent is 64 − 8 + 10.5 ≈ 66.5 dp inside the tile, which is what the text's ~72 dp end padding is buying room for. Compute this once and put the number where the sibling's padding is written, with the working next to it — nobody will re-derive it, and every change to the size or the angle invalidates it.

Reserve the space whether or not the art loads. The cover is usually nullable — resolved by a separate request, arriving late or never. Pad the text unconditionally, so the tile does not reflow under the user when the image appears, and design the gradient-plus-badge state to look finished on its own rather than as an empty slot.

Fractional decoration sizes are relative to the dimension you choose, and a square tile hides the choice. Sizing a badge off the width works fine on a 1:1 tile; on a 2:1 tile the same fraction doubles it. Anchor on the height (or on min(width, height)) so the badge stays the size the eye expects across aspect ratios, and say so in a comment — this is not visible from the constants.

Give the cover a content scale that fills. Source art is arbitrary aspect; ContentScale.Crop fills the square so the rotation never exposes background through a corner. Fit will letterbox and the letterbox turns with the image.

offset versus absoluteOffset matters in right-to-left. offset mirrors its horizontal value in an RTL layout direction, which for a corner-hugging decoration is usually what you want — but the alignment must mirror with it. Decide deliberately rather than by default, and check the tile in an RTL locale, because a decoration that mirrors while its alignment does not lands in the middle.

The background here is a gradient at an angle, not a colour, and is drawn by a draw modifier that needs the box size — see angled-gradient-modifier. Deriving its colours from the item's title, with the same generator the coverless placeholder uses, is what makes an unloaded tile look intentional rather than empty: deterministic-title-placeholder-painter.

Verifying it

1. Every rotation, with the surrounding chain, so you can check clip order at each site:

   grep -rn --include='*.kt' -B3 -A2 "\.rotate(" . | grep -v '/build/'
   

2. The dangerous order specifically — a clip applied before a rotation on the same element:

   grep -rn --include='*.kt' -A2 "\.clip(" . | grep -v '/build/' \
     | grep -E "^[^:]+-[0-9]+-.*\.rotate\(|\.clip\(.*\.rotate\("
   

   Every hit is a site whose rotated corners are being sliced. The two alternatives do different jobs: -[0-9]+- keeps only grep's context lines, catching a clip with a rotate below it, while \.clip\(.*\.rotate\( catches the same order written on one line. Excluding the matched line matters, because -A2 prints it too — a bare grep "\.rotate(" after it would also report the safe single-line .rotate(…).clip(…).

3. Children offset outward, each of which needs a clipping parent:

   grep -rn --include='*.kt' -E "\.offset\(x = [0-9]" . | grep -v '/build/'
   

4. By eye, and this is the test that catches the arithmetic: put the longest title you support on the tile and confirm the ellipsis lands clear of the tilted art, not merely clear of the 64 dp box. Then set the angle to 45°, where the bounding box is at its widest (s·√2), and confirm the padding was derived rather than eyeballed.