- Building a Navigation Bar with Flexbox 7:32
- Creating a Two Column Layout with Flexbox 2:36
- Creating a Three Column Layout with Flexbox 5:24
- Aligning Items to the Bottom of a Column 4:13
- Creating a Sticky Footer with Flexbox 4:58
- Building a Layout with Flexbox 5 questions
- Flexbox Columns Challenge 2 objectives
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Building a Navigation Bar with Flexbox
7:32Flexbox's source-order independence makes it the perfect tool for building a responsive website navigation.
[MUSIC]
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By now you know that Flexbox gives you a
quicker and easier way to lay out content.
0:04
Its direction, order, space distribution,
and automatic sizing features make
0:09
it an intelligent solution for
building responsive layouts.
0:13
So now it's time to put those new
Flexbox skills into practice.
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Coming up in this section, you're going
to use Flexbox to build the layout
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a simple web page called Best City Guide.
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This web page should look familiar.
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It's the layout you built
in the CSS basics course.
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I'll teach you some of the real world
problems Flexbox can easily solve
0:32
when building a responsive layout.
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For example, switching the direction of a
navigation from vertical on small screens,
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to horizontal on large screens.
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Also, displaying flexible content
columns with equal heights or
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rearranging content order based on screen
size, and the easiest solution for
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displaying a sticky footer.
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So first up,
let's begin building the navigation.
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To follow along using
the latest workspace,
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launch the workspace on this page or
you can download the project files.
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Flexbox's source order independence
makes it the perfect tool for
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building a responsive website navigation.
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You can layout the site logo and
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navigation in one column on narrow
viewport sizes and mobile devices.
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Then in wider viewports and devices,
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the navigation can scale up
to a wider horizontal layout.
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And in the widest view port range
you can position the navigation and
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site logo on the same line.
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So the logo can be aligned to
the left side of the page,
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while the navigation links
are aligned to the right side.
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All this with just a few lines of CSS.
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In the index.html file,
the navigation inside
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main-header consists of an h1 element.
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With the class name containing
the Best City Guide name.
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And the navigation menu is an unordered
list with the class main-nav.
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The base styles for
this webpage are in the file base.css.
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This CSS applies to all
browsers from phones and
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tablets to desktop computers, and at the
bottom of the style sheet there are two
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media queries that center the layout
containers like main-header and row.
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And sets their fluid width in
wider screens and devices.
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You can see all the base styles once you
preview the workspace in the browser.
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So for these lessons only,
I've split up the CSS file so we can focus
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only on the Flexbox layout styles and not
be distracted by all these base styles.
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So we're going to write the Flexbox
styles inside the file flexbox.css.
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Now, normally on your projects you'd
write the Flexbox layout styles
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in the same CSS file, but again writing
them in a separate file will make
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everything in these lessons
easier to explain, and
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just like in previous CSS layout courses,
we're going to use a mobile
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first approach to build this flex box
layout starting with the navigation.
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So we'll use the basic layout styles
to style the web page for small,
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mobile devices first, then using the two
media queries inside flexbox.css,
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we'll adjust the layout for wider screens
and devices using flex box properties.
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So first, when the view port or
device is 769 pixels or wider,
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I wanna use Flexbox to change the vertical
layout of the navigation to a horizontal
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layout, so that it fills the horizontal
space of wider screens and devices.
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So by now you know that the first
step in creating a Flexbox layout is
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defining the flex container.
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So inside the first media query, I'll
select main-header and display it flex.
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So I'll type display: flex.
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So now the name and main-nav elements
inside main-header are flex items.
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So now when the view port is 769 pixels or
wider, the site name and
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navigation are on the same line.
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But the main-nav list items
are still vertically stacked.
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To display them side by side,
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I need to define a new flex formatting
context for the list items.
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In other words, I need to make their
parent main-nav a flex container.
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It's possible for
flex items to be flex containers, too.
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So, I'll make main-nav a flex container
by grouping it with main-header.
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So this means that main-nav can
accept flex container properties,
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and the list items inside
main-nav are now flex items.
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Back in the browser, once I refresh,
the direction of the navigation switches
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from vertical to horizontal
on wider screens.
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So the site name and navigation items
are now laid out on the same line.
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So next, at the 769 pixel break point,
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I'm going to display the site name and
navigation on separate lines, so
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that the header doesn't appear too
cramped on narrow screen sizes.
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I could adjust the layout using
the flex-direction property.
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So back in the media query,
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I'm going to create a new rule
that targets main-header,
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then I'll add the flex-direction
property and set the value to column.
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Then I'll center align
the navigation by setting main
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header's align-items value to center.
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So now the site name and
navigation display in a column direction
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on separate lines, while main-nav
direction remains horizontal.
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Next, when the view port
starts to get wider,
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I want to take advantage of the extra
horizontal space that opens up and
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position both the name and
navigation on the same line.
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The second media query in our style sheet
targets view port widths in devices that
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are 1025 pixels and wider.
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Inside this media query,
I will select main-header and
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set its flex-direction to row.
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Now when the view port is 1025 pixels or
wider,
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both the site name and
navigation appear on the same line.
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Finally, at this width,
I wanna position the site name on
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the left side of the header, and
the navigation menu on the right.
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Now the easiest way to do this is
with the justify-content property.
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Back inside the second media query,
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I'm going to add the justify-content
property to the main-header rule,
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and set the value to space-between.
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Now the value space-between
will align the name
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flex item to the left edge
of the container, and
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the main-nav item to the right edge,
and at any extra space between them.
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So back in the browser, the site name
is now flush with the left margin
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of the page and the navigation menu
is perfectly placed on the right.
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Nice.
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So coming up in the next video, we'll
lay out the two columns using Flexbox.
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