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MELVIN GEORGE
MELVIN GEORGE

Posted on • Originally published at melvingeorge.me

How to make HTML elements in horizontal order that is responsive to the screens using CSS?

Originally posted here!
To make HTML elements in horizontal order or row-wise that are responsive to the screens, we can use the CSS display property and set its value to flex, then we can use the property flex-direction and set its value to row, and finally, we can use the flex-wrap property and set its value to wrap. These values should be applied to the parent element of the children elements where you want this to take place.

For example, let's say we have three red color boxes with 200 * 200 dimensions (width * height).

The HTML code would look something like this,

<html>
  <body>
    <!-- Three `red` color boxes -->
    <div>
      <div class="box">Box 1</div>
      <div class="box">Box 2</div>
      <div class="box">Box 3</div>
    </div>

    <!-- Styles for the boxes -->
    <!--
      `margin` of `2px` is applied to
      make some gap within the elements
    -->
    <style>
      .box {
        width: 200px;
        height: 200px;
        background-color: red;
        margin: 2px;
      }
    </style>
  </body>
</html>
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The webpage now looks like this,

three red color boxes arranged vertically

As you can see that we have defined three red background colors div and applied a width of 200px and a height of 200px. If you look closely, you can also see a parent div that is enclosing all these boxes. This is where we have to apply the CSS properties to make it horizontal order or row-wise.

Let's add a class of parent to the parent div element and apply the display: flex;, flex-direction: row; and the flex-wrap: wrap; properties to it.

It can be done like this,

<html>
  <body>
    <!-- Three `red` color boxes -->
    <!-- 
      add a class name of `parent` to the parent
      `div` to apply styles to it.
    -->
    <div class="parent">
      <div class="box">Box 1</div>
      <div class="box">Box 2</div>
      <div class="box">Box 3</div>
    </div>

    <!-- Styles for the boxes -->
    <!--
      `margin` of `2px` is applied to
      make some gap within the elements
    -->
    <!--
      adding `display: flex`, `flex-direction: row`
      and `flex-wrap: wrap` property to make it in horizontal order.
    -->
    <style>
      .box {
        width: 200px;
        height: 200px;
        background-color: red;
        margin: 2px;
      }

      .parent {
        display: flex;
        flex-direction: row;
        flex-wrap: wrap;
      }
    </style>
  </body>
</html>
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Now the webpage looks like this,

three red color boxes on the webpage are now in horizontal order or row-wise

Now let's understand what just happened. The display: flex; property sets the parent div element into a flexbox container, and the flex-direction: row property made the div take up the entire available width of the screen by making the elements flow in the row direction and finally the flex-wrap: wrap; property allows the three red color boxes to go into the second line if the available width is too low.

The flex-wrap: wrap property made the three boxes to be responsive to the screen.

A visual representation of the webpage is shown below,

three red color boxes flows into the second line when the width of the screen is too low for the boxes

We have successfully made the 3 boxes flow in the horizontal direction as well as making them responsive. Yay 🥳!

See the above code live in the codesandbox.

That's all 😃.

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