CSS Flexbox and Its Properties
Last Updated :
22 Oct, 2024
CSS Flexbox, or Flexible Box Layout, is the layout model designed to create flexible and responsive layout structures without using float or positioning. By applying display: flex to a parent container, it becomes a flex container, and its children become flex items. This allows control over the items' growth, shrinkage, and space distribution.
Note: Not all browsers support the flexbox properties, so make sure that the browser you are using supports this property.
Basics of Flexbox
Apply a display type of flexbox to the parent container, this would make all the child elements in it to adjust into the flex type and these would be called the " flex items ". This means they have become more flexible i.e. we can control how much they can shrink and how much they can grow and also the spacing between these elements.
- Display: flex: Applies flexbox to the parent container, making child elements flex items.
- Flex Items: Flexible elements that can grow, shrink, and adjust spacing.

- The flex container can change the width, height and order of the child elements.
- Items can grow or shrink to fill the available space or to prevent overflow.
- Available space is distributed among other items.

Axes of Flexbox:
1. Main Axis: Direction of flex items (left-to-right, right-to-left, top-to-bottom, bottom-to-top).
A) left to right
flex-direction: row
B) right to left
flex-direction: row-reverse
C) top to bottom
flex-direction: column
D) bottom to top
flex-direction: column-reverse
2. Cross Axis: Perpendicular to the main axis.
Flexbox Properties:
1. Parent Properties:
- display: Defines a flex container.
- flex-direction: Defines the main axis direction.
- flex-wrap: Allows items to wrap onto multiple lines.
- flex-flow: Shorthand for
flex-direction
and flex-wrap
. - justify-content: Aligns items along the main axis.
- align-content: Aligns items along the cross axis.
- align-items: Aligns multiple lines of items on the cross axis.
2. Children/Flex-items Properties:
- order: Changes the order of items without altering the source order.
- flex-grow: Allows an item to grow to fill available space.
- flex-shrink: Allows an item to shrink if there's insufficient space.
- flex-basis: Defines the initial size of an item.
- flex: Shorthand for
flex-grow
, flex-shrink
, and flex-basis
. - align-self: Aligns a single item within the flex container.
Example:
HTML
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content=
"width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<style>
body {
display:flex;
align-items: center;
justify-content: center;
color: green;
font-size: 50;
}
h2 {
margin: 10px;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h2>CSS Flexbox</h2>
<h2>and Its Properties</h2>
</body>
</html>
Conclusion
CSS Flexbox provides a systematic way to design flexible and responsive layout structures, enhancing web design by allowing easy arrangement, alignment, and distribution of space among items in a container. Understanding and using Flexbox properties can significantly improve the efficiency and flexibility of your web designs.
Similar Reads
CSS Tutorial CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. It is a stylesheet language used to style and enhance website presentation. CSS is one of the three main components of a webpage, along with HTML and JavaScript.HTML adds Structure to a web page.JavaScript adds logic to it and CSS makes it visually appealing or
7 min read
CSS Introduction CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a language designed to simplify the process of making web pages presentable.It allows you to apply styles to HTML documents by prescribing colors, fonts, spacing, and positioning.The main advantages are the separation of content (in HTML) and styling (in CSS) and the
5 min read
CSS Syntax CSS is written as a rule set, which consists of a selector and a declaration block. The basic syntax of CSS is as follows:The selector is a targeted HTML element or elements to which we have to apply styling.The Declaration Block or " { } " is a block in which we write our CSS.HTML<html> <h
2 min read
CSS Selectors CSS Selectors are used to target HTML elements on your pages, allowing you to apply styles based on their ID, class, type attributes, and more. There are mainly 5 types of selectors.Basic CSS Selectors: These are used to target elements by tag, .class, or # ID for fundamental styling needs.Combinato
7 min read
CSS Comments CSS comments are used to add notes or explanations to your code, helping you and others understand it better. They start with /* and end with */ and can be used for both single-line and multi-line comments. Note: Comments are ignored by browsers, so they wonât affect how your webpage looks or works.
2 min read
CSS Colors CSS colors are used to set the color of different parts of a webpage, like text, background, and borders. This helps make the page look more attractive and easier to read. You can define colors using names, hex codes, RGB values, and more.You can try different formats of colors here- #content-iframe
6 min read
CSS Borders Borders in CSS are used to create a visible outline around an element. They can be customized in terms ofWidth: The thickness of the border.Style: The appearance of the border (solid, dashed, dotted, etc.).Color: The color of the border.You can try different types of borders here- #custom-iframe{ he
5 min read
CSS Margins CSS margins are used to create space around an element, separating it from neighboring elements and the edges of the webpage. They control the layout by adjusting the distance between elements, providing better organization and readability.Syntax:body { margin: value;}HTML<html> <head>
4 min read
CSS Height and Width Height and Width in CSS are used to set the height and width of boxes. Their values can be set using length, percentage, or auto.Width and HeightThe width and height properties in CSS are used to define the dimensions of an element. The values can be set in various units, such as pixels (px), centim
4 min read
CSS Outline CSS outline is a property used to draw a line around an element's border. It does not affect the layout, unlike borders. It's often used to highlight elements, providing a visual emphasis without altering the dimensions of the element.Syntaxselector{ outline: outline-width outline-type outline-color
4 min read