Flex, Grid and Adaptive Layout

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Working with adaptive CSS layout techniques without code

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Build a full site in Webflow

7:45

Getting Started with Webflow

28:15

Flex, Grid and Adaptive Layout

18:46

Components, Nav Bar & Lightbox

15:41

Tabs and Customizations

19:55

Transitions and States

17:21

Animations and Interactions

20:09

Scroll Parallax

11:41

Start Animation

9:08

Lottie Animations

16:35

Design with Data and CMS

12:17

Symbols, Links and Pages

14:16

Forms and Submit Data

13:30

Ecommerce and Custom Code

13:28

About this Course

In this free Webflow course, I'm teaching you how to implement and deploy a real site for Angle from scratch without a single line of code. It's going to be a fully functional site with multiple pages, advanced interactions, dynamic data, payments and animated assets from Shape.

Projects

Untitled

Flex vs Grid

Flex is good for stacking elements in one direction and wrapping. Grid allows you to stack both horizontally and vertically at the same time. It's great for a gallery type of layout requiring gap distances. It's also a perfect replacement for the old HTML tables. Absolute positioning allows you to float elements on top of each other.

You can learn more about Flexbox and CSS Grid on the CSS Tricks site. It has a comprehensive list guide on how to use its features.

Getting Started

In this section we'll be learning about best practices in terms of layout. Currently, we're using margins and padding, one of the rules for reusable elements is to avoid using both of these. Instead, we should use CSS grid and flex whenever possible because not every element will need those exact margins or padding. So, we'll start by setting the margins for the Text and the Heading to 0.

Grid

Select the Content Block. In Display, select the third option i.e. Grid. For now, we don't want a gallery layout, in Columns, remove the second one by clicking on the bin icon. Enter 30 as the value for Rows in Gap. To not have the Download button take up the entire width, click on Content Block and in Alignment, select the 1st option in the second row. i.e. Align items to left.

Logo Block

Select the Content Block and add a Div Block element to it. By default it uses Block, go to Display and choose the 2nd option i.e. Flex. We'll be adding logos in this Div Block. To do so, select the Div Block and add an image element to it. Select the Sketch logo from the Assets we copied earlier. Right click and duplicate the image element twice. To replace the Sketch logo with the XD and Figma ones, simply click on the cog icon on the image element, then on 'Replace Image' button and select the respective images.

Flex

Select the Div Block which is already set to Flex. Set its width to 100%. Now, go to Justify and select the 4th option i.e. Space Between which is the perfect for us in this case. Please feel free to try out the other options to learn more about them. Since, the width is too big, replace 100% with 186px.

Purchase Button

Currently, we're using padding for the Purchase Button. We'll be replacing it with Flex instead. Select Purchase and in Display, choose the Flex option. Select Vertical as the Direction and remove the padding we had previously. Set Justify to Center. This will make the button more adaptive compared to when we were setting the padding manually.

Float Elements

In this step, we'll learn how to make elements float on top of each other. In Purchase, add a new Div Block. In the position dropdown, select Absolute. Absolute means that the element is going to float and that it won't take any physical size unlike the elements that don't have position absolute. In Position, set Left to 0.

Relative Positioning

To make sure that it's positioned against the container and not against the entire canvas, select Purchase and give it a Position of Relative instead of Static.

Card Icon Block

Now, we'll style the box. Select Div Block 2, set its width to 64 and height to 32. Set the background color to #4312F2 and the border-radius to 10. Click on the '+' icon and choose the Icon-Card.svg file. Set its width to Auto, choose the 'X' option in Tile and Position it to left-middle. In Position, enter 34 as the value for Left. Go to the Position property for Div Block 2 and replace 0 with -15.

Media Queries

The final step in the section is to make the content adaptive. We'll start with tablets, click on the tablet icon to edit. Select Hero and then select the Background1. In position, replace 50% with 44% as the value of Left. Do the same for the Background2, replace 100% with 70%.

Inherit

You'll notice that the properties are in Orange while the Desktop properties are in Blue, this means that the properties were inherited from Desktop. Any change you make to the tablet screen will be inherited by the mobile devices as well but it will have no effect on the Desktop.

Mobile Landscape

Let's customize mobile landscape. Click on the Mobile-Landscape icon, select Container and give it a padding-left as well as padding-right of 20. Now, select Hero and enter 40% instead of 44% for Background1. To center the content, select Container and in Display, choose Flex. Justify the content to the Center by choosing the 2nd option in Justify.

Mobile Portrait

To make mobile portrait adaptive, start off with selecting the Content Block and set its width to 280. Now, select the Text Span and reduce the font-size from 140 to 120. Lastly, set the font-size for the Heading to 28. Publish the site and resize your browser window to test the responsiveness.

Conclusion

In this section we learned a lot about flex and grid layout, about absolute positioning and media queries. In the next one, we'll learn about navigation with logo and menus. We'll also learn how to create a hamburger menu for smaller screen sizes.

Steps

CSS Grid

Delete column

Gap Rows 30

h1 margin top bottom Auto

Remove margins

Align self Start

Flex

Width 100%

Change to 3 columns

Insert Image in each column

Change to Flex

Purchase

Selector Purchase

Padding top 0 (Reset)

Change to Flex, Vertical

Justify Center

Launch Promo Margin top 3px

Purchase Icon

Create Div Block

64 x 32px

Background #4312f2

Border Radius 10px

Background Icon-Card.svg, Width Auto, Left 34px, Top 50%, Don't Tile

Position Absolute, Top 19px, left -15px

Set Container to Position Relative

Media Queries

Tablet

Background2.svg Left 70%,
Background1.svg Left 44%

Mobile Landscape

Background1.svg Left 40%
Container, Flex, Justify Center - Padding L20, R20,

Mobile Portrait

Content Block W 280px
h1 120px
h2 28px

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Getting Started with Webflow

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Build a full site in Webflow

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Getting Started with Webflow

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Meet the instructor

We all try to be consistent with our way of teaching step-by-step, providing source files and prioritizing design in our courses.

Meng To

I design, code and write

Meng To is the author of Design+Code. Meng started off his career as a self-taught designer from Montreal and eventually traveled around the world for 2 years as his US VISA was denied. During his travels, he wrote a book which now has 35,000 readers.

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