Image grid with autorescaling in HTML & CSS Only - html

Question

I have been trying to make a responsive auto rescaling image grid to display ads on our website. I used this as a reference - W3Schools-ImageGridMaker
Based on that, I tried 4days to come up with this piece of code.
div.gallery {
border: 1px solid #ccc;
}
div.gallery:hover {
border: 1px solid #777;
}
div.gallery img {
display: block;
object-fit: contain;
max-width: 100%;
max-height: 100%;
width: auto;
height: auto;
}
div.desc {
padding: 15px;
text-align: center;
}
* {
box-sizing: border-box;
}
.responsive {
padding: 0 6px;
float: left;
width: 24.99999%;
}
#media only screen and (max-width: 700px) {
.responsive {
width: 49.99999%;
margin: 6px 0;
}
}
#media only screen and (max-width: 500px) {
.responsive {
width: 100%;
}
}
.clearfix:after {
content: "";
display: table;
clear: both;
}
div.boxed {
border: 5px solid red;
width: 100%;
height: auto;
overflow: auto;
}
<div class="boxed">
<div class="responsive">
<div class="gallery">
<a target="_blank" href="https://tnilive.com" onclick="window.open('https://www.google.com'); window.open('https://www.yahoo.com');"> <img src="https://i.imgur.com/UgPbxk2.jpg" alt="Shiva1"></a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="responsive">
<div class="gallery">
<a target="_blank" href="https://tnilive.com" onclick="window.open('https://www.google.com'); window.open('https://www.yahoo.com');"> <img src="https://i.imgur.com/ColLeDr.png" alt="Shiva2"></a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="responsive">
<div class="gallery">
<a target="_blank" href="https://tnilive.com" onclick="window.open('https://www.google.com'); window.open('https://www.yahoo.com');"> <img src="https://i.imgur.com/gVjcLg2.jpg" alt="Shiva3"></a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="responsive">
<div class="gallery">
<a target="_blank" href="https://tnilive.com" onclick="window.open('https://www.google.com'); window.open('https://www.yahoo.com');"> <img src="https://i.imgur.com/nxGxovl.png" alt="Shiva4"></a>
</div>
</div>
</div>
This code is responsive, and on mobiles I got no problem because it looks neat by filling the full area. But if you look at it on a desktop, it injects empty space underneath some pics that doesn't fit the height. I am using bunch of URLs and can feed them as a list so that this 1280X200px area on desktop fills up neat with images that are of different sizes. I tried looking into freewall and a ton of other jsfiddles and pens but couldn't achieve on how to make the whitespace removed and make that particular box look good. Thanks.

Answer 1

Per my comments - I would go with a flexbox solution that uses object-fit (with a polyfil for ie):
.container {
display: flex;
flex-direction: row; /* default value so optional - lines children in a row */
flex-wrap: wrap; /* allows children to wrap */
justify-content: space-between; /* space children evenly over row */
}
.responsive {
flex-basis: 25%; /* makes the width 25% */
/* if you don't want a fixed height image, I would use the padding top trick for aspect ratio divs */
position: relative;
padding-top: 30%;
}
.responsive img {
position:absolute;
display: block;
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
top:0;
left:0;
object-fit:cover;
}
#media only screen and (max-width: 700px) {
.responsive {
flex-basis: 50%;
margin: 6px 0;
}
}
#media only screen and (max-width: 500px) {
.responsive {
flex-basis: 100%;
padding-top: 50%;
}
}
<div class="container">
<div class="responsive">
<div class="gallery">
<a target="_blank" href="https://tnilive.com" onclick="window.open('https://www.google.com'); window.open('https://www.yahoo.com');"><img src="https://www.fillmurray.com/400/600" alt="Shiva3"></a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="responsive">
<div class="gallery">
<a target="_blank" href="https://tnilive.com" onclick="window.open('https://www.google.com'); window.open('https://www.yahoo.com');"><img src="https://www.fillmurray.com/400/400" alt="Shiva3"></a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="responsive">
<div class="gallery">
<a target="_blank" href="https://tnilive.com" onclick="window.open('https://www.google.com'); window.open('https://www.yahoo.com');"><img src="https://www.fillmurray.com/400/900" alt="Shiva3"></a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="responsive">
<div class="gallery">
<a target="_blank" href="https://tnilive.com" onclick="window.open('https://www.google.com'); window.open('https://www.yahoo.com');"><img src="https://www.fillmurray.com/400/700" alt="Shiva3"></a>
</div>
</div>
</div>