Super easy responsive Row and Columns in straight up CSS
Grid layouts are the bread and butter of web development design and chances are you've reached for something like Bootstrap or Foundation to make your layouts a reality. But, like most of you, I don't have a fondness of the dependencies required to run Bootstrap or Foundation nor do I like the ding to my page load times.
In fact when I use Bootstrap for an application that I am writing, I really almost only ever use it for the grid layouts, sometimes I will use it for notifications or basic fairly sensible CSS defaults, but 90% of the time, all I want is the grid layouts.
I also don't appreciate only have options of splitting columns into 12 columns or less. It feels like you sometimes have to do some crazy work arounds to get columns in columns, or strange things like that.
How can we do grid layouts faster and easier? Flexbox is your answer. I think
Flexbox
At this point flexbox is pretty much everywhere. It's supported by all major browsers. It allows for much easier layouts and is supported by React-Native which means when I layout pages for React-Native I reach for flexbox first, but I have found my self reaching for flexbox first in web development as well.
In fact the last application I laid out, I did entirely with flexbox. I have found it that easy to use.
If you don't know too much about flex box. I like this page that gives a good run down of flexbox
Layout
First I wrap the entire page in a div.
<div class='some-page-wrapper'>
</div>
Then I define a .row and .column class that can help with the layout.
.row {
display: flex;
flex-direction: row;
flex-wrap: wrap;
width: 100%;
}
.column {
display: flex;
flex-direction: column;
flex-basis: 100%;
flex: 1;
}
Now if we want a two column layout:
<div class='some-page-wrapper'>
<div class='row'>
<div class='column'>
<div class='blue-column'>
Some Text in Column One
</div>
</div>
<div class='column'>
<div class='green-column'>
Some Text in Column Two
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
The CSS looks like:
.some-page-wrapper {
margin: 15px;
background-color: red;
}
.row {
display: flex;
flex-direction: row;
flex-wrap: wrap;
width: 100%;
}
.column {
display: flex;
flex-direction: column;
flex-basis: 100%;
flex: 1;
}
.blue-column {
background-color: blue;
height: 100px;
}
.green-column {
background-color: green;
height: 100px;
}
What if we wanna add a third column? The HTML is easily updated to:
<div class='some-page-wrapper'>
<div class='row'>
<div class='column'>
<div class='blue-column'>
Some Text in Column One
</div>
</div>
<div class='column'>
<div class='green-column'>
Some Text in Column Two
</div>
</div>
<div class='column'>
<div class='orange-column'>
Some Text in Column Two
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
And we get a third column added. That seamlessly nests itself in our row.
Now what if we want more complicated layouts?
We can just add more rows, that is pretty easy.
<div class='some-page-wrapper'>
<div class='row'>
<div class='column'>
<div class='orange-column'>
Some Text in Column One
</div>
</div>
<div class='column'>
<div class='blue-column'>
Some Text in Column Two
</div>
</div>
<div class='column'>
<div class='green-column'>
Some Text in Column Three
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class='row 2'>
<div class='column'>
<div class='green-column'>
Some Text in Row 2, Column One
</div>
</div>
<div class='column'>
<div class='orange-column'>
Some Text in Row 2, Column Two
</div>
</div>
<div class='column'>
<div class='blue-column'>
Some Text in Row2, Column Three
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Or we can resize our columns.
To have a double column we can add a .double-column class. This can work with any sized column though, you can do 60/40, you can do 10/10/10/10/10/10/10/10/10/10, honestly any combination is possible here. You can do 1 X 100. Or 10 x 1, then 20 x 3, then 30 x 1. The options are endless!
On one layout, I added a large margin around my "column" and since the row will wrap down, I have one row with as many "columns" as I need. The columns were fixed width cards so they just wrap to the next line and flexbox neatly responsively wraps the cards down the screen.
.double-column {
display: flex;
flex-direction: column;
flex-basis: 100%;
flex: 2;
}
This isn't very responsive though? We can add some responsitivity using media queries.
Just move the flex: 1 and flex: 2 into a media-query (size depends on application I'm just giving an option)
@media screen and (min-width: 800px) {
.column {
flex: 1
}
.double-column {
flex: 2
}
}
At > 800px:
At < 800px:
The final codepen, hint click the 1x or 0.5x buttons in the lower right corner to see the difference in the "responsive" layout.
Essentially we just blew the row/columns of bootstrap out of the water with 20 lines of CSS. We have a way to create row/column layouts quickly and since we use flexbox we barely have to worry about the layouts breaking, or anything going wrong. It's easily adapted to a wide variety of uses and allows a large amount of customizability. What do you think about flexbox? Have you tried it yet?
Another hidden benefit is that if I layout React components in this way, its pretty easy to layout React-Native components very easily to look similar.
I usually use SCSS in my projects so if you see something that isn't perfect CSS let me know!
Oldest comments (49)
Thanks for the example-driven post. Super great resource.
Cool tutorial.
Think you mean "column". And the next paragraph, too, refers to "row" instead "column".
Whoops. Thanks for the catch.
Ohhh. I'll have to check this out.
Thanks for the great article and examples. I've just started reading about flex box on MDN. This article really helped me understand it.
Yeah, I am glad it is helping! This is just one example of how to use flexbox though it is very powerful if you play with it a little bit. Flexbox has really helped me step up my front end skills. It makes things like centering and aligning trivial as long as you think about your layout a little bit before you put any code down.
Nice writeup. Here's some fun katas sites for Flexbox for those interested:
CSS Grid is starting to become mainstream and if you don't need to worry about legacy browsers, it's definitely the way to go for layout. Having said that, we've started using css grid at work, but Flexbox is still very useful.
I've started watching Jen Simmons' YouTube series. It's another great CSS resource. Here's a relevant video.
Cheers and looking forward to your next post!
Thank you!
Yesss. I am so psyched about grid becoming more fully supported. I don't even consider myself too much of a front end expert and I look forward to getting to use grid. I will consider it more seriously the next time I work on something new!
👍
@wesbos has a great CSS Grid course if you're interested.
Yeah check out @wesbos ' JavaScript30.com. He also has a great free course thanks to Mozilla on CSS Grid. Check out cssgrid.io. If you enjoy listening to podcasts, Wes and Scott "El Toro Loco" Tolinski have a great one called Syntax. And lastly, he did an AMA on dev.to a while back that might interest you.
Thanks for referring the flex box zombies game, it is very helpful.
Thank you Andrew.
I've never thought about giving meaningful class names such as
rows&columns.It just made CSS much more readable.
Haha, I know there are many people with many ideas about how to name classes and ID's in HTML and CSS. I have yet to use anything that I liked enough to stick with. So, I go with "sensible" and "meaningful" class names. But It sometimes still feels unorganized. One of the biggest reasons I like to use the above to layout pages, is that I can scope all my SASS to the outer level div, and that can help keep things organized. My opinions on class naming are evolving though, maybe I should write something about that next!
I'd love to read about it ❤️🕺
I use Bulma CSS for this kind of stuff - any other good libraries out there that support flexbox or simil?
... and wrapping it in a form will break it.
Great example, I would recommend a little grid framework, for the not that front end developer, that don't want to use bootstrap.
daneden.github.io/Toast/
I've heard of toast, but I haven't used it. I'll dive in!
Great tutorial! I really appreciate it. Probably will change the way I build sites.
Thank you! I am new to web developing and I appreciate articles like yours that break things down in an easy to follow way.
I used to despise CSS for how complicated I found to set up a simple grid structure but this article made it super easy to understand. Thank you for this! I will definitely be referencing this in the future.
Definitely referencing this in my resource list my company is putting together!
Thanks Andrew :)
This is the best feedback! Thanks!
You've now inspired me to write up some cool stuff like this but for Sass. You da man.
That's pretty straightforward challenge comes when you have nested columns/ equal height content column/ background images.
You're a life saver... Thank you😊