Use Flexbox to Make Responsive Layouts

I'm at the beginning of my Web Development journey like many of you, and it is a long and difficult road. But remembering if I keep going, all this hard work will pay off in the end. As I build upon my skills and add new tools to my belt, the things I used to think were hard(like callback functions) become easier with time.

Unlike a lot of other fullstack devs, I actually love CSS and think it is fun to make a unique design of a webpage. I want to share with you one of my newest tools I have learned. Which is using Flexbox instead of hard-coding margins and padding. It allows you to create flexible and responsive layouts that look great on all screen sizes without the need for media queries(awesome, right?!).

The main advantage of using Flexbox is that it allows you to align and distribute your HTML elements in a container, which then can be aligned vertically and horizontally. Allowing you complete control of the element's size, order, and spacing.

To start using Flexbox, you will need to create a container element in your HTML file and then add child elements into the container. Then, to turn that container into a Flexbox, in your CSS file you will set the display property to flex. Lastly, you can set the flex properties of the child elements to determine how you want them to look.

HTML

<div class="flex-container">
  <div>1</div>
  <div>2</div>
  <div>3</div>
</div>

CSS

.flex-container {
  display: flex;
  flex-direction: row;
}

With these flex properties, the child elements within the flex container will now be evenly spaced. Flexbox also offers many other flex properties that can be used to customize the layout of your page. Some of these include flex-wrap, flex-flow, align-content, flex-basis, and align-self. These properties give you the ability to control the size, order, and alignment of individual flex items within the container and there are more properties to explore on your own.

Flex-flow is the way to define flex-direction and flex-wrap in a single declaration and they are defined like this.

 .container {
        display: flex;
        flex-flow: row wrap;
    }

Using flexbox can save you a lot of time and effort when it comes to creating responsive layouts. Instead of manually calculating margins and padding for each element, flexbox does it for you. It allows you to easily create dynamic and flexible designs that adapt to different screen sizes without the need for media queries.

In conclusion, flexbox is a powerful tool for creating responsive layouts in web development. By using flex properties and a flex container, you can easily align and distribute your HTML elements in a flexible and responsive way.

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[Kostas Kalafatis]

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