So far everything we’ve touched with flexbox has used the rule flex: 1
on all flex items, which makes the items grow or shrink equally to fill all of the available space. Very often, however, this is not the desired effect. Flex is also very useful for arranging items that have a specific size.
This section contains a general overview of topics that you will learn in this lesson.
Let’s look at another example.
See the Pen flex-alignment example by TheOdinProject (@TheOdinProjectExamples) on CodePen.
You should be able to predict what happens if you put flex: 1
on the .item
by now. Give it a shot before we move on!
Adding flex: 1
to .item
makes each of the items grow to fill the available space, but what if we wanted them to stay the same width, but distribute themselves differently inside the container? We can do this!
Remove flex: 1
from .item
and add justify-content: space-between
to .container
. Doing so should give you something like this:
justify-content
aligns items across the main axis. There are a few values that you can use here. You’ll learn the rest of them in the reading assignments, but for now try changing it to center
, which should center the boxes along the main axis.
To change the placement of items along the cross axis use align-items
. Try getting the boxes to the center of the container by adding align-items: center
to .container
. The desired result looks like this:
Because justify-content
and align-items
are based on the main and cross axis of your container, their behavior changes when you change the flex-direction of a flex-container. For example, when you change flex-direction
to column
, justify-content
aligns vertically and align-items
aligns horizontally. The most common behavior, however, is the default, i.e. justify-content
aligns items horizontally (because the main axis defaults to horizontal), and align-items
aligns them vertically. One of the biggest sticking points that beginners have with flexbox is confusion when this behavior changes.
One more very useful feature of flex is the gap
property. Setting gap
on a flex container simply adds a specified space between flex items, very similar to adding a margin to the items themselves. gap
is a very new property so it doesn’t show up in very many resources yet, but it works reliably in all modern browsers, so it is safe to use and is very handy! Adding gap: 8px
to the centered example above produces the result below.
See the Pen flex-alignment example by TheOdinProject (@TheOdinProjectExamples) on CodePen.
There’s more for you to learn in the reading below, but at this point surely you can see how immensely useful flexbox is. Using just the properties we’ve already covered you could already put together some impressive layouts!
Take your time going through the reading. There will be some review of the items we’ve already covered here, but it goes into more depth and touches on a few things that haven’t been mentioned yet. Don’t stress too much about trying to memorize every little detail yet; just code along with the examples and do your best to internalize everything that is possible with flexbox. You’ll have to reach for these resources again once you get to the practice exercises, but that’s perfectly acceptable. The more you use this stuff the better it will stick in your mind… and you will be using it constantly. Have fun!
align-items
vs justify-content
.This section contains helpful links to other content. It isn’t required, so consider it supplemental.
This section contains questions for you to check your understanding of this lesson on your own. If you’re having trouble answering a question, click it and review the material it links to.
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