Flexbox Adventures

benvds 11 years ago |

This makes doing layouts in css so much easier. I can't wait until we can drop al the grid frameworks and use this instead.

Another good explanation on CSS-Tricks: http://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to-flexbox/ Browser support: http://caniuse.com/#search=flexbox

apaprocki 11 years ago | |

Wouldn't you rather use CSS Grid to replace grid frameworks? http://igalia.github.io/css-grid-layout/

kristiandupont 11 years ago |

This little tool is neat for making quick flexbox structures: http://maxsteenbergen.com/fibonacci/

altano 11 years ago | |

I use this one, which has a bug or two but is excellent and feature rich: http://the-echoplex.net/flexyboxes/

gulbrandr 11 years ago | |

Amazing little tool, thank you!

speg 11 years ago |

How does this work responsively? I was initially reading this on my phone, and the first example says the middle item is not allowed to grow so the left and right have been given an equal share so they are sized evenly.

Except on my phone I was seeing the left and middle taking up 50% and the right one being pushed down and taking up 100%.

altano 11 years ago | |

flex-shrink dictates how negative free space should be distributed. When there is no free space, it is irrelevant.

In addition to that, below a certain width, the CSS on the parent UL is being changed from flex-wrap: nowrap; to flex-wrap: wrap;, so when the container shrinks to a width smaller than the sum of the flex-basis of all elements, it will wrap.

Keep in mind I haven't read the flex spec yet, though, so that's based on observation not spec.

joshuahutt 11 years ago | |

What kind of phone do you have?

andrewingram 11 years ago |

Here's my favourite example of a layout that to the best of my knowledge, you can't solve with flexbox. I've only been able to solve it with JavaScript

A grid representation of a list, let's say a list of image thumbnails along with small amount of other data. Something like the image grid in iPhoto.

What's so hard? Let me expand the requirements. I want the dimensions of each item to be identical, let's say a square. I also want each item to be as close to a specific size as possible, but scaled up or down slightly to allow each row of items to exactly fit the width of the containing element. With the exception of the last row, which is allowed to be unfilled.

You can nearly do this with flexbox. The only problem is that the elements in the last row will be stretched to fill the row if it's short a few items. It's also fairly awkward ensuring the height of an element matches it's width, the current solution seems to be a hack involving padding-bottom.

I'm planning on trying out http://gridstylesheets.org/ to see if it's expressive enough for what I want. Of course, the catch is that I'm still depending on JavaScript.

dunham 11 years ago | |

Can you add at least one row worth of empty items? They'll spill into an extra row and get stretched, but you won't see them.

andrewingram 11 years ago | | |

That's a novel approach. The catch is that the number of items per row is fluid, so you'd have to overestimate on how many extra items you'd need, then you have the problem of not knowing how much overflow to hide for the parent container. Unless i'm misunderstanding your idea?

mcot2 11 years ago | |

Is this possible with CSS grid layout? Flexbox and grid were supposed to be complementary but Flexbox seems to have a major head start on actual implementations.

altano 11 years ago |

If flex hasn't completely changed how you write layout related CSS, and it isn't because of legacy browser support, you're missing out.

I also recommend this guide which is very visual and helped me a lot: http://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to-flexbox/

tomphoolery 11 years ago | |

What's browser compatibility like on this? Do I need to install any polyfills to get this to work on older browsers (mostly older IEs)?

billsossoon 11 years ago | | |

http://caniuse.com/#feat=flexbox

Internet Explorer, as usual, screws everything up. No support in IE8 and IE9, limited support in IE10.

altano 11 years ago | | |

In practice, IE10 is totally fine. If you have to support IE9 and lower you shouldn't adopt flex box yet.

simpleblend 11 years ago |

Great post. Just used Flexbox for the first time on a production site and it's working great. I did have to use significant fallbacks for IE though, but that'll soon be a thing of the past.

qntmfred 11 years ago |

I remember about 4 years ago I discovered flexbox but of course it didn't have good browser support yet and there were even a few other competing proposed CSS solutions.

Just last month I started using it on a production application for the first time. We all talk about the web moving fast, but 4 years is a long damn time to have to wait. Especially considering I was doing a lot of WPF/Silverlight at the time as well and this type of layout support was built in from the start.

kagamine 11 years ago | |

You didn't really have to wait that long, I used it on a site a year ago (Autumn 2013) and managed IE8 support along with FF, Chrome, IE8+ with a combination of the 'old' flexbox and the new (+ a couple of IE hacks).

reneherse 11 years ago | | |

Could you please describe, or point to a resource for, the necessary IE hacks? I'd be most appreciative. Thanks!

RobertKerans 11 years ago | | |

One technique is, alongside flex, to use Sass/LESS/Stylus mixins (or just CSS classes), using float and widths: IE8/9 use those, they're ignored if flexbox is supported. It takes a little work, and you have to limit yourself somewhat, but it's reasonably robust. Effectively, you describe a float-based grid, but include all necessary flex-based declarations. Alternatively, you describe a display:table based grid, but that has fairly serious downsides.

All current hacks available are pretty fragile. Best solution is a separate set of rules scoped to .no-flexbox (or .flexbox if you're going the other way). It's a massive pain in the arse, tbh.

matrix 11 years ago | | |

Thank you; people like you help change the status quo.

Anyone aware of any large sites using Flexbox that has non-tech users, e.g. Netflix or a major ecommerce site? I ask because I'd like to see any presentations or write-ups those guys may have written about their experience.

mcguire 11 years ago |

Can we get a new rule? "In the first few paragraphs of "introduction to X" or "all about Y", mention what X or Y is?

Please?

_greim_ 11 years ago |

Looking forward to using this once IE8 drops off the radar (never mind IE10). I considered using it with fallbacks, but deemed it to be not worthwhile since A) I had to limit flexbox to whatever the alternate scheme (display:table-cell in this case) could do, B) I was basically maintaining and debugging two separate layouts at that point.

leephillips 11 years ago | |

But it doesn't work in IE 9, right? Isn't that a big chunk of audience?

jonrimmer 11 years ago | | |

Depends on where you source your browser usage statistics, but IE9's share is smaller than IE8's. For example, caniuse.com[1] has IE8 on 3.18%, and IE9 on 2.13%. Later versions of IE (and Windows) are better at auto-updating, and people using them seem to be more willing to upgrade.

I'm lucky enough to work for a company with a last-2-versions support policy for IE, meaning IE10 and 11 are all I have to worry about. I can't understate how much nicer it makes web development. So much of the bad reputation of web technologies stems from wrestling bugs in old versions of IE and the lack of proper layout capabilities in CSS.

[1] http://caniuse.com/#search=flex

apaprocki 11 years ago | | |

In case you want a more "mainstream" sample, I see this on bloomberg.com: IE9 6.20%, IE8 4.09%, IE11 3.80%, IE10 3.12%, IE7 0.42%

jonrimmer 11 years ago | | |

To be clear, the caniuse.com stats are sourced from StatCounter Global Stats[1], not from the site itself, so they should be fairly reliable, albeit averaged across the world. Obviously, nothing beats measuring for your own site and audience.

[1] http://gs.statcounter.com/

niklasni1 11 years ago |

I'm using a multitude of nested flexboxen in a web app currently in testing and it's working well. There may be theoretical performance issues and slightly odd behaviour at points but nothing I've noticed -- main thing is all the layout-juggling JS I didn't have to write...

jarnix 11 years ago |

Wow it's really impressive.

SimeVidas 11 years ago |

“…while helpful tools like grunt-autoprefixer will feel like magic, my personal experience with them has shown them not to be so perfect.”

Can the author elaborate?

ptb 11 years ago |

Flexbox syntax reference: http://ptb2.me/flexbox/

paxtonab 11 years ago |

According to caniuse.com it is fully supported on all major browsers now too.

melling 11 years ago | |

Yes, but are you willing to forgo IE8, IE9, and IE10 support?

http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qpri...

Let's hope Windows 10 is a huge hit.

janfoeh 11 years ago | | |

If you're willing to include vendor prefixes and all three syntaxes, you can get considerably better support, including IE10: http://css-tricks.com/using-flexbox/

grumblestumble 11 years ago | | |

IE10 uses a substantially different interim spec syntax that is conceptually different in a couple of key ways.

jonrimmer 11 years ago | | |

If you run your CSS files through Autoprefixer[1], it's possible to use the latest syntax, and have it automatically converted to all necessary older ones.

[1] https://github.com/postcss/autoprefixer