https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/CSS/flex-basis. Normal row (with unequal-height columns) For comparison, here's a normal row, without.row-eq-height..row > .col-xs-4.row > .col-xs-4 this is a much taller column than the others.row > .col-xs-4. Note that CSS columns have no effect on a flex container. Even React Native has flexDirection set to ‘row’ by default so I’m not the only one who thinks column should be the default value of flex-direction. I’ve read that this version of Safari is (old), but how it should to looks like? I read this article few years ago, still relevant :). Thanks so much for this resource! When you define main-axis you say that its direction depends on the justify-content property, but isn’t the flex-direction property that defines if flex items are layed out as a row or as a column? Is there a particular attribution you would like? Think of flex items as primarily laying out either in horizontal rows or vertical columns. So ‘auto’ is only useful if you have a height or width set, which is pretty useless because you could just use that value as the ‘flex-basis’. Sorry, I misunderstood your question. I have always wondered why a good layout system has been missing from CSS. I hat to say it, but the frustration expressed by PPK and many others strikes me as very similar to my daughter’s frustration with going to school. It was always greater than 2 times. VERY VERY COOL! The only way I’ve currently found forces me to add a padding to the container which isn’t ideal. I did a restart and when I saw the page I did a triple-take. Seeing the parent and child examples side by side meant it was easier to compare behaviours and to pick the right approach. It is recommended that you use this shorthand property rather than set the individual properties. Good tutorial all though I think you should discuss and elaborate on this code: display: -webkit-box; Just so happens that giving them the ability to grow on an equal basis the most common need so flex: 1; is a nice way to write that. Thanks for all of the great information, it really helped me to understand flexbox. I have stumbled upon this interesting StackOverflow question re justify-content: flex-start and margin: auto on a container. Edit suggestion: In the flex-direction section, the visual examples do not match the order shown in the css code snippet. However, the order property controls the order in which they appear in the flex container. Both can adjust for the screensize, but are optimized for different applications. This makes styling web and RN problematic because in order to have the same developer experience, you either have to set the flex-drection of divs to ‘column’, or set the flexDirections of Views to ‘row’. It breaks it for some reason. It's a useful piece of code that keeps your UI more consistent thanks to Flexbox. This can be accomplished by setting a min-height on the content row: calc(100% – header-height – footer-height) but it requires hard-coding or JS to accomplish AFAIK. Any advice would be greatly appreciated….I’ve tried all manner of logic including flex box within a flex box to make this work….perhaps it’s a limitation of the way flex box is being implemented in webkit browsers or vice versa. But how about 2)? Therefore these new tags were added to simplify web structure/layout, rather than to complicate it. What am I doing wrong here? The prefixes still should be available if needed, but it shouldn’t be necessary. You can use flexbox in production pretty well as long as you’re using a sound way to detect less-than-ideal support for flex-wrap w/ modernizer and use a ratio-based grid system like Singularitygs as a fallback. Thanks so much for the article! Good explanation of the need for multiple vendor-prefixed rules here. Behavior of the last two changes depending of flex-direction. or at least the current number of rows (since the columns are not rigid)? Be sure to go to CodePen and try resizing your windows to see what happens. You must expand that section to see the content. Everything’s optional. Hi Stephen, I believe that justify-content isn’t to be used for this purpose. I just want to say thank you. Great stuff in here, but I am obviously missing some basics from my end. You make my life better! So I used Flexbox to lay out the columns in left-to-right (row) direction, and then lay out each child in each row in top-to-bottom (column) direction. I wouldn’t call negative margins rubbish. Has always been very useful. Feel free to fork, re-post and question. Developed a flexbox playground based on this artical to learn it better, check it on https://poonia.github.io/flexbox/. There is currently a crippling bug in Firefox that makes any non-trivial implementation of flex unfeasible. It looks like the ccentre might be the cause. I feel like it’s best at this point (at least in terms of this guide) to focus on the current properties. One of the examples (Numbered Tomato boxes that wrap) uses webkit-flex-flow, instead of just flex-flow, so the example becomes specific to webkit only. Ok, i got it, there was no question xD Sorry. :(. I’m new to flexbox and certainly don’t want to spread my noob confusion, but I noticed a couple things: To align items along main axis you’ll need to change align-items instead. If flex-direction = column, that will align items along the cross axis. This defines a flex container; inline or block depending on the given value. How to solve that? It would be mighty nice if they offer Flexbox row selectors for multi-row wrap flows. Am I misunderstanding something? Now of course I realize that this might be newer than when you first wrote this (somewhere around April 2013 as far as I could gather), but i also noticed at the top (under your by-line) says “Last updated: August 22, 2018”. IE doesn’t seem to like -webkit-flex-flow. Can I trust pretty much full browser support for flexbox’s “new” syntax without worrying about all the fallbacks? Consider a list of 6 items, all with fixed dimensions, but can be auto-sized. Things I noticed using flexbox that are a real pain: Using margin: 0 auto; on the flex-container shrinks the container (and it’s containing flex-items) to the minimum width. So now I’m sceptical, which of these two options would be the safest, both for use right now and for other projects going forward? A|===|A|===|A|===|A It would be even better if there is a real webpage example built with Flexbox, like a more complete version than the last example, so that we can see how Flexbox is used in real life. But then on codepen.io, when you include compass you are able to use the other directives. It’s ugly code, most people use a post CSS processor like Autoprefixer. But your site puts things in the language a non-programmer teacher can use to update to something other than frames. display: -moz-box; If you haven’t read my previous post, you don’t need to. I think the Support Chart is out of date for Safari. I am not clear. We’re actively looking for feedback on that issue at the moment, so please let us know if any! You can check out the codepen at http://cdpn.io/qliuj, I find myself doing a Mr. Burns “excellent”, as I’m pretty excited about align-items: stretch. width: 100% and order: the last div in your list. I find it difficult to understand . list-style: none; I’m thinking that I would experiment with a background color of the site, then the container would be another color (centered) and then the flex items yet another color. Note: This property only takes effect on multi-line flexible containers, where flex-flow is set to either wrap or wrap-reverse). If you do, it wrongly calculates the space around or between the items. Only specifying widths every time is not very effective. What I want is 3 breakpoints like this: seem to support multi-line flexboxes currently. Thanks for the fix PaulOB ! http://i.snag.gy/VHJsV.jpg thanks. or not and why ? align-items seems to default to stretch now. GREAT STUFF! Good explanation of the need for multiple vendor-prefixed rules here. Is there a better way around this without requiring a hard-coded height? I think that fact that justify-items doesn’t apply to flexbox layouts should be included in this article as well :). That property doesn’t apply to flexbox. So please try to anwer in easy words :) You can always use the display:box untill ff22 is released. Just fixed it by adding TWO flexbox items into CSS. I think the grid solution could be solved with nth-child. For example, space-between never got support from some versions of Edge, and start/end/left/right aren’t in Chrome yet. a kind of cheat sheet ? I found it highly insightful. Have column width equal it's tallest sibling. I want to be able to infinitely expand the browser window and always have my content area fill the empty space and I never want the footer to change size. I often use flexbox with margins and calc, so I might use something like: This works fine with Safari, Firefox and Chrome, but not Internet Explorer. the initial value of ‘flex-basis’ is ‘main-size’, and if omitted in the shorthand property ‘flex’, it’s value is ‘0%’. Seems flex wrap could be a bit more flexible, if it support indentation and hanging indentation, as for paragraphs. You can get some useful insights (and ones very specific to your site and users) by installing Google Analytics. It doesn’t help that Safari acts differently than Firefox and Chrome so if I manage to get it to work on FF+Chrome I then have to go over and fight safari and hope I don’t break FF+Chrome. and on tablet device, one small box goes to bottom with full width and on top of this we have two equal box now. This was easy to understand and extremely helpful for a new project we’re working on. Thanks for this awesome post. Thanks. Using this: There seems a bug that with the container’s main size, please see this pen And is that something one would even want to do? Want to have this: Try to open this (i want to display in this way), But now block number four is moved to center and on the bottom of block number two (whole layout). 1) 3 rows (containers vertical, small screen) Oops, I guess you can disregard the 2nd part of the preceding comment. flex-basis: 20rem; I kind of agree with the article. If not, no big deal. Ola.. I’m curious about using margin: auto; on children vs the slightly more verbose justify-content: space-around; align-items: center; on the parent. https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/1696 Hi, I’m looking for the way to do a fullscreen menu for my website with flex, with a header on the top and the rest of the space with only 6 big responsive buttons. flex-start: lines packed to the start of the container Cheers to you, Chris. Better yet, post your question and all related code to a site like Stack Overflow that’s designed for questions and answers, Here’s my example. Is there any way for items on the last row to be placed/aligned underneath the elements from the previous row (left->right)?? Please have a look at this figure from the specification, explaining the main idea behind the flex layout. Using “space-between” on the container sticks the footer to the bottom of the browser window and sticks the content area to the top of the browser window. I want last one (footer) to be always at the bottom of this page. Using the example below, item1 will take up 3 times less space than item2 if the parent div is less than the width of both flex-basis‘s (600px). @Louisa You didn’t include your CSS code, so it’s impossible to tell what’s wrong. i had a problem with firefox like other users here but came over it by wrapping the columns/rows in more container like a user suggested. So lets say when the .item2 & .item3 are both absent, based on my css above, the .item1 shows at the top/start of my .container – which is not really desirable because if .item1 is the only element in the container, I want it to behave as if the container has justify-content: center instead. What bothers me, is if you use either flex-direction: row; or flex-direction: column; It dictates what property you use to center objects horizontally. Hey, Cris! Good article, I just shared on Twitter. Like @include display-flex? And I just love your (Illustrator?) I’ve set a container width to 100% and put six div items with width of 20% in it. thank you so much Chris.. Could you please explain flex-shrink a little better? What I find though is that regardless of project I always and without fail, fail to get it work and it’s just random guessing which particular element needs a ‘min-height: 0’ or a ‘height: 100%’ or some other thing. and using the flexbox you can also do Equal height thumbnail boxes, text vertically center … Firstly, we want all images in the img-group to sit side by side. Very interesting article. As long as you’re considerate enough to have a style guide that documents documenting how a particular component ought to look if it in facts differs from both, you should be fine. Nice illustrations. I’ve posted the html file here: http://www.datagnosis.com/test_layout.html. e.g. Thanks, Do I have that right? Easy enough. IE11 Thanks Chris! On the last media query in order to do that ( http://cdpn.io/rhbmd ). Adding flex-wrap:wrap; flex-direction: row; or just flex-flow: row wrap; works though. See code examples with comments…. Let’s say there’s only room for 4 of the items on the first row, the remaining 2 will be evenly spaced on the second row. This relies on the fact a margin set to auto in a flex container absorb extra space. So in order to prevent that we could set max-width on the flex container, but that cancels out the centering for some reason and the page flushes left. When you define main-axis you say that its direction depends on the justify-content property, but isn’t the flex-direction property that defines if flex items are layed out as a row or as a column? Thanks for the article, helped me a great deal bringing my LESS-implementation and Bower package up to date! Ref: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/dn265027(v=vs.85).aspx And what about CSS grid, safe for production with fallbacks? Using this page as a guide and reference, I created a web-app based log in template that looks like a phone-app. I’m interested but a bit confused at the same time. I just updated Firefox to v20 on a mac and now all of the flex-box demos aren’t working. Wanted to spread the word, since there seems to be some confusion around this property flying around in the wake of Firefox previously not having supported it. Whilst I was learning, I put together an open source flexbox grid that uses a traditional 12 column approach, which I find helps to apply flexbox’s attributes easier. But now I´ve recognized that aside 1 and aside 2 aren´t next to the main part. display: -webkit-flex; I think that’s because flexbox isn’t fully supported by firefox until v22. I happen to use Autoprefixer, which added this IE-specific property name in for me. Now I am sure there is a javascript way of doing this but I am wondering if you have a few css-tricks up your sleeves that will achieve this in a simple elegant css way. Thanks so much for your time. Would be useful in HTML emailers to rearrange the order of elements. Tiny error on https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to-flexbox/ First Step: Create HTML File as name “index.html” | Change file name as you want The CSS Working Group has a document online of “…Mistakes in the Design of CSS”, one of them is this: Flexbox should have been less crazy about flex-basis vs width/height. This establishes the main-axis, thus defining the direction flex items are placed in the flex container. See it live in action: https://codepen.io/anon/pen/WrOqma. @Coolcat007 You mention that this can be done with tables and calc() – is this so – even if you have a dynamic number of items?? I write css for the screens 1440 resolution. Ideas? Anyhow, don’t mean to be lazy; I can look this stuff up tomorrow. Thank you for introducing me to the wonderful world of flexboxes! I checked this page in FF22 and IE10 and it was a mess. Why is it that when I resize the browser window displaying flexbox elements (on this page, for example) the page position after resizing is different than what I was looking at before? Worthy of me sending a comment/email to somebody? Is that something that can be fixed in flexbox? It’s no biggie, just was wondering if there was a way to specify the last row or something. I just read that too, but when I was tinkering with it in Chrome only auto worked! What works in all other browsers, either doesn’t work in Safari, or doesn’t work correctly. When using the flex-shorthand in Safari 7 (7.1.6) (-webkit-flex) without specifying the third parameter (-webkit-flex-basis), Safari will compute the value 0px and wrapping via -webkit-flex-wrap is not going to work. By David Walsh on February 2, 2015 19; Flexbox was supposed to be the pot of gold at the long, long rainbow of insufficient CSS layout techniques. The video lesson link: http://www.sketchingwithcss.com/flexbox/ and a five lesson tut: http://www.sketchingwithcss.com/flexbox-tutorial/. In the same manner that you do so with non-flex grids, apply a negative margin-left to the grid wrapper, and apply that same value as padding left to all grid columns. Can someone point me to a tutorial or demo of using iframe within a flexbox container. Flexbox its fine, but It is still not valid for a simple perfect “product grid” with no margins at first and last elements in row, and left aligned. Questions: One of the nice things about flexbox is this will work with an arbitrary number of boxes. Responsive Equal Height Column With CSS Flexbox it's a very simple. Has anything changed this this tutorial was published? Everything still looks great in Chrome. Note: Flexbox layout is most appropriate to the components of an application, and small-scale layouts, while the Grid layout is intended for larger scale layouts. How it will be work on mobile browser. The alignment you see is on the last but one line. I think you can, have a look at the example here: https://plnkr.co/edit/yKLl8irs6xudPHfTh1u9. justify-content: center; // to center the container horizontally, can you do this with absolute elements? I uploaded everything to “http://tesserakt.pro/demo/repsonse”. Below is a pen featuring this example. :p, Wow, its so cool , can’t wait to try it out. Does using flexbox responsibly meaning coding the site via flexbox and usual css positioning methods as a fall back for browsers who dont support flexbox, coding the layout twice? You can set a fixed pixel height, but this can cause reflowing issues. http://caniuse.com/#feat=flexbox. Otherwise: could you build this layout >using flexbox? (ughh). There’s always something more to learn. Time for bed in the UK though. I just learned about flexbox yesterday so now I’m all anxious to learn more. illustrations – how did you do them? Let’s start with a very very simple example, solving an almost daily problem: perfect centering. great tutorial!! flex-grow: 1; That’s how I think about it anyway. My boss says flexbox is stupid. two small at the left and one big at right in one row distributed 50% width to each. Pin a copy up on the office wall. MDN has detailed charts. It works within the media-queries as well – so whether there are 5, 4, 3, or 1 images in the first row, the last row looks fine. Also, keep in mind that every set of flex items needs a flex container. I just had to redo an entire page which used to use an HTML table to present a matrix. I only wish (maybe asking too much) I could download PDF files of all those great articles on the subject. Especially when you get like 8 levels deep. Each column has a different amount of content. http://stackoverflow.com/q/32229436/2396907 In the first line of the SASS mixin, shouldn’t @mixin flexbox() be just @mixin flexbox? As soon as I changed my container to flex, ‘margin: 0 auto’ no longer works to center the container. width:880px; Used this tutorial and it worked great in FF and Chrome, but in Opera it does not. @Alex Yes, you can. Hi Chris – thanks for publishing this tutorial – it’s my go to when I’ve need a flexbox refresher! 6 items, this example does not allow elements to be an feature. '' via CSS flexible, if anyone could help me, please let know! Filed a bug on Firefox that makes any non-trivial implementation of flex items will be big no. And found that explicitly adding some height to the main part times right now it... This helped me to the main part header/footer and the only other possibility is to it visualize it this also... 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