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Using Flexbox for Responsive Layout in Open Event Webapp

Recently, I tackled the issue of alignment of different buttons and input bar in the Open Event Webapp. The major challenge was to create a responsive design which adapts well on all the platforms: desktop, tablets and mobile. Doing it using grid layout provided by Bootstrap was rather tough and complicated and I solved the problem using the flexbox.

What is Flexbox?

Flexible Boxes, also called as Flexbox, is a new layout mode introduced in CSS3. The best part of using flexbox is that it ensures that the elements behave in a predictable manner when the page layout accommodates different screen sizes and display devices. In other words, it helps us in making a responsive design in a simpler manner. It is an alternative to block elements being floated and manipulated using media queries. Using Flexbox, a container and its children can be arranged in any direction: up, down or left and right. Size is flexible and elements inside the flexbox can grow or shrink to occupy unused space or prevent overflow respectively.

The difference with grid layouts?

There is a slight difference between flexbox and grid layouts which makes one suitable for creating a fully complete layout and the other not so much.

Ideally, grids (provided by Bootstrap for example) are used for creating an entire layout. Flexbox is suited for styling separate containers such as navbars for example.

flex_terms.png

                                 Structure of Flexbox Container

How did I solve it?

First I defined a container which acted as a wrapper for all the buttons and the search bar. Now, to convert this container into an actual flexbox, we have to add display: flex property to it.

.container {
 display: flex;
}

Did the issue got solved? It doesn’t look so. The container enclosed in the red border is the flexbox.

flexnogrow.png

As we can see from the picture itself, the elements are quite close to each other and a lot of space is wasted. Fortunately, flexbox provides us a handy property called flex-grow which deals with this type of problem. It defines the ability for a flex item to grow if necessary. That it, it tells how much amount of the available space inside the flex container the item is allowed to take. If all the items have flex-grow set to 1, then the remaining space in the container would be equally distributed to all the items. In a similar way, if an item has flex-grow set to 2, then it would occupy twice the amount of available space when compared to the other items.

So, I applied the flex-grow:1 on the items.

.list-btn {
   flex-grow: 1;
}

.search-filter {
   flex-grow: 1;
}
.starred-btn {
   flex-grow: 1;
}

.calendar-btn {
   flex-grow: 1;
}

How does it look now?

flexbox_initial.png

Much better. But is the problem solved now? No. There is one more thing that we haven’t checked yet. Yes. It’s the responsiveness. We haven’t yet checked how it displays on tablets and mobiles yet? Let’s test and check and what we see.

mobilenowrap.png

Ok. Something is not right. The items are squeezing together. That doesn’t look good. We don’t want the elements to wrap on a single line. What we actually want is that the items would stack on top of each other when the screen size is reduced. That would look much more neat and tidy.

To change this default behavior of wrapping of items, we use the flex-wrap property on the container. Specifying flex-wrap: wrap does the trick and the items wrap as needed.

mobilewrap2.pngmobilewrap1.png

 

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

The result looks much better now. The items wrap on a single line only when there is enough space available. Otherwise, they wrap up onto multiple lines from top to bottom.

Flexbox is a great tool for creating custom layouts for separate containers. Apart from the properties discussed here, there are a plethora of other options which can be used to customize the behavior of flexbox and the items contained inside it.  Check out the links below for more information!

Resources:

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