The Complete CSS Flex Box
Tutorial
Much like CSS Grid (my other Medium tutorial) Flex
Box is quite complex because it consists of not one
but two element types: The container & items.
To get a good idea of how flex works try flex layout
editor on this page.
When I started to learn Flex, I wanted to see everything it
was capable of. But, I wasn’t able to find a thorough tutorial
showing examples of all Flex properties. So, I created these
diagrams with Flex from the bird’s eye view.
That’s everything Flex is capable of. But… let’s go over each
diagram individually with comments. By the end of this
Flex tutorial you should be up to speed with pretty much
the complete picture of what it can do.
Flex
Flex is a set of rules for automatically stretching multiple
columns and rows
of content across parent container.
display:flex
Unlike many other CSS properties, in Flex you have a main
container and
items nested within it. Some CSS flex properties are used
only on the parent. Others only on the items.
You can think of a flex element as a parent container
with display:flex. Elements placed inside this container
are called items. Each container has a flex-start and flex-
end points as shown on this diagram.
Main-axis and Cross-axis
While the list of items is provided in a linear way, Flex
requires you to be
mindful of rows and columns. For this reason, it has two
coordinate axis. The
horizontal axis is referred to as Main-Axis and the vertical is
the Cross-Axis.
To control the behavior of content’s width and gaps between
that stretch
horizontally across the Main-Axis you will
use justify properties. To control
vertical behavior of items you will use align properties.
If you have 3 columns and 6 items, a second row will be
automatically created
by Flex to accommodate for the remaining items.
If you have more than 6 items listed, even more rows will be
created.
Flex items equally distributed on the Main-Axis. We’ll take a look at
the properties and values to accomplish this in just a moment.
You can determine the number of columns.
How the rows and columns are distributed inside the parent
element is determined by CSS Flex properties flex-
direction, flex-wrap and a few others that will be
demonstrated throughout the rest of this flex tutorial.
Here we have an arbitrary n-number of items positioned within a
container. By default, items stretch from left to right. However, the
origin point can be reversed.
Direction
It’s possible to set direction of the item’s flow by reversing it.
flex-direction:row-reverse changes direction of the item list flow.
The default is row, which means flowing from left to right, as you
would expect!
Wrap
flex-wrap:wrap determines how items are wrapped when parent
container runs out of space.
Flow
flex-flow is a short hand for flex-direction and flex-wrap
allowing you to specify both of them using just one property name.
flex-flow:row wrap determines flex-direction to be row and
flex-wrap to be wrap.
flex-flow:row wrap-reverse;
flex-flow:row wrap; justify-content: space-between;
flex-flow:row-reverse wrap;
flex-flow:row-reverse wrap-reverse;
flex-flow:row wrap; justify-content: space-between;
The direction can be changed to make the Cross-Axis primary.
When we change flex direction to column, the flex-
flow property behaves in
exactly the same way as in previous examples. Except this
time, they follow
the vertical direction of a column.
justify-content
I received a lot of requests to clarify the example above. So, I
created this animation. The original piece from which the
diagram was crafted:
Hope this clears the fog a bit.
flex-direction:row; justify-content: flex-start |flex-
end |center|space-between |space-around |stretch
|space-evenly. In this example we’re using only 3 items
per row.
There is no limit on the number of items you wish to use in
flex. These diagrams only demonstrate the behavior of items
when one of the listed values is applied to justify-
content property.
The same justify-content property is used to align items
when flex-direction is column.
Packing Flex Lines (according to Flex
specification)
Flex specification refers to this as ”packing flex lines.”
Basically, it works just like the examples we’ve seen on the
previous few pages. Except this time, note that the spacing is
between whole sets of items. This is useful when you want to
crate gaps around a batch of several items.
Packing Flex Lines (continued.) But now with flex-
direction set to column.
align-items
align-items controls the align of items horizontally,
relative to the parent container.
flex-basis
flex-basis works similar to another CSS property: min-
width outside of flex. It will expand item’s size based on
inner content. If not, the default basis value will be used.
flex-grow
flex-grow, when applied to an item will scale it relative to
the sum of the size of all other items on the same row, which
are automatically adjusted according the the value that was
specified. In each example here the item’s flex-grow value
was set to 1, 7 and (3 and 5) in the last example.
flex-shrink
flex-shrink is the opposite of flex-grow. In this example
value of 7 was used to ”shrink” the selected item in the
amount of time equal to 1/7th times the size of its
surrounding items — which it will be also automatically
adjusted.
When dealing with individual items, you can use the
property
flex as a shortcut for flex-grow, flex-shrink and flex-
basis using only
one property name.
order
Using order property it’s possible to re-arrange the natural
order of items.
justify-items
One last thing for those who are looking to use CSS
Grid together with Flex Box… CSS grid’s justify-items is
similar to Flex’s justify-content. (The properties
described in the above diagram will not work in Flex, but it’s
pretty much the grid’s equivalent for aligning cell content.)
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See my other comprehensive CSS Grid tutorial right
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