In 2014, Jackie Balzer wrote an excellent piece for Smashing Magazine on using Sass to automatically manage the z-index of elements using lists.

I’ve been using this technique since an ex-colleague introduced me to it in early 2015, but the disconnect between maintaining multiple lists was starting to bug me.

So, I’ve come up with a variation which uses Sass maps and lists, and allows me to clearly see the hierarchy of the different elements.