Flexbox – Modern Layout Made Easy

Let’s dive into one of the most powerful tools in modern CSS — Flexbox!

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📘 LESSON 8: Flexbox – Modern Layout Made Easy

✅ Learning Goals:

• Understand what Flexbox is and why it’s useful
• Learn the most important Flexbox properties
• Create flexible layouts with just a few lines of code
• Build a responsive card layout using Flexbox

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🧾 Lesson Content (Text for Website)

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🔄 What is Flexbox?

Flexbox (Flexible Box Layout) is a CSS module that makes it easy to design layouts that adapt to screen size and content.

No more float, margin-hack, or display: table tricks. Flexbox handles it all beautifully!

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🧱 The Flexbox Parent

To activate Flexbox, apply this to a container:

display: flex;

That’s it! All children (items) now become flex items.

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💡 Example:

<style>
  .container {
    display: flex;
  }

  .box {
    background: #ff6f00;
    color: white;
    padding: 20px;
    margin: 10px;
    flex: 1;
  }
</style>

<div class="container">
  <div class="box">Box 1</div>
  <div class="box">Box 2</div>
  <div class="box">Box 3</div>
</div>

Each box gets equal width, thanks to flex: 1.

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📐 Important Flexbox Properties

🔹 On Parent (.container):

Property	What it does
display: flex	Activates Flexbox
flex-direction	Row (default) or column layout
justify-content	Aligns items horizontally (main axis)
align-items	Aligns items vertically (cross axis)
gap	Adds spacing between items
flex-wrap	Allows wrapping onto next line

🔹 On Children (.box):

Property	What it does
flex	Controls item growth/shrink/basis
align-self	Overrides vertical alignment
order	Controls the order of items

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🧪 Flexbox in Action: Horizontal Menu

<style>
  .nav {
    display: flex;
    justify-content: space-between;
    background: #333;
    padding: 10px;
  }

  .nav a {
    color: white;
    text-decoration: none;
    padding: 10px;
  }
</style>

<div class="nav">
  <a href="#">Home</a>
  <a href="#">About</a>
  <a href="#">Contact</a>
</div>

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🔁 Flex Direction Column

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

Stacks items vertically instead of in a row.

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🎯 Common Layouts You Can Make with Flexbox:

• Navigation bars
• Cards in a grid
• Equal-height columns
• Centering content (vertically and horizontally!)

.center-box {
  display: flex;
  justify-content: center;
  align-items: center;
}

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💪 Practice Task

✅ Build a 3-card layout that:

• Is responsive (cards shrink on small screens)
• Uses gap, flex-wrap, and justify-content
• Centers content inside each card

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📌 Quick Summary

• Flexbox is a layout system that adapts to content
• Use display: flex to start
• Combine justify-content, align-items, and flex for full control
• Super useful for responsive designs

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🔗 Next Lesson:

👉 Lesson 9: Responsive Design & Media Queries