Cross Browser Support for CSS Flexbox

Cross Browser support for CSS Flexbox

CSS Flexbox model is optimised for UI Design.
It is developed primarily to avoid overflowing parent element. It will shrink children when ancestor element size is constricted. It will fill the space by expanding child element's size when ancestor element size extends.
Flex container shrink and expand behaviour can break with min and max width / height property.

CSS FlexBox versions by version

W3 2009 : display: box;

box-align                start | end | center | baseline | stretch  
box-direction            normal | reverse | inherit
box-flex                 <number>   0.0
box-flex-group           <integer>  1
box-lines                single | multiple
box-ordinal-group        <integer>  1   visual
box-orient               horizontal | vertical | inline-axis | block-axis | inherit inline-axis box elements    no  no  visual
box-pack                 start | end | center | justify 

W3 2011 : display flexbox | inline-flexbox

flex-align        auto | baseline   auto
flex-direction    lr | rl | tb | bt | inline | inline-reverse | block | block-reverse   flexboxes   no  lr | rl | tb | bt
flex-order        <integer> 1   
flex-pack         start | end | center | justify    

W3 2012 : display flex | inline-flex

align-content    flex-start | flex-end | center | space-between | space-around | stretch    
align-items      flex-start | flex-end | center | baseline | stretch
align-self       auto | flex-start | flex-end | center | baseline | stretch                 
flex-direction   row | row-reverse | column | column-reverse
flex-flow        <'flex-direction'> || <'flex-wrap'>    
flex-grow        <number>   ‘0’ 
flex-shrink      <number>   ‘1’
flex-wrap        nowrap | wrap | wrap-reverse
justify-content  flex-start | flex-end | center | space-between | space-around
order            <number>   0

Browser support for Flexbox inside of another flexbox

When using Flexbox and take full advantage of its properties, one will get at cross browser solution.

The major part here is to drop all height:100%; and make use of the Flebox growth property, flex-grow.

Additionally, I made both outerContent and innerContent flex containers, so Flebox can take care of filling the remaining space all the way.

Note, I have tested this with success on Chrome/Firefox/IE11/Edge

Fiddle demo

Stack snippet

html, body {

  margin: 0;

}

body {

  display: flex;             /*  IE11 fix  */

}

.outerFlexBox {

  flex: 1;                   /*  IE11 fix  */

  min-height: 100vh;

  display: -webkit-flex;

  /* for Safari */

  -webkit-flex-direction: column;

  /* for Safari */

  display: flex;

  flex-direction: column;

  background-color: green;

  border: black dotted;

}

.outerHeader {

  border: blue dotted;

}

.outerContent {

  flex-grow: 1;

  border: red dotted;

  display: -webkit-flex;

  /* for Safari */

  -webkit-flex-direction: column;

  /* for Safari */

  display: flex;

  flex-direction: column;

}

.innerFlexBox {

  flex-grow: 1;

  display: -webkit-flex;

  /* for Safari */

  -webkit-flex-direction: column;

  /* for Safari */

  display: flex;

  flex-direction: column;

  background-color: yellow;

  border: black solid;

}

.innerHeader {

  border: blue solid;

}

.innerContent {

  flex-grow: 1;

  border: red solid;

  display: -webkit-flex;

  /* for Safari */

  -webkit-flex-direction: column;

  /* for Safari */

  display: flex;

  flex-direction: column;

}

.myTable {

  flex-grow: 1;

  width: 100%;

  border: grey solid;

}

<div class="container-fluid outerFlexBox">

  <div class="outerHeader">

    <h4>Some Outer Header</h4>

  </div>

  <div class="outerContent">

    <p>Some outer content</p>

    <div class="innerFlexBox">

      <div class="innerHeader">

        <p>Some Inner Header</p>

      </div>

      <div class="innerContent">

        <p>Some inner content</p>

        <table class="myTable">

          <thead>

            <tr>

              <th>Some Header Column</th>

            </tr>

          </thead>

          <tbody>

            <tr>

              <td>Some row</td>

            </tr>

            <tr>

              <td>Some row</td>

            </tr>

            <tr>

              <td>Some row</td>

            </tr>

            <tr>

              <td>Some row</td>

            </tr>

            <tr>

              <td>Some row</td>

            </tr>

            <tr>

              <td>Some row</td>

            </tr>

          </tbody>

        </table>

      </div>

    </div>

  </div>

</div>

Cross-browser flexbox in-line styling with ReactJS

A quick suggestion would be to use Radium (http://formidable.com/open-source/radium/). It has support for auto-prefixing, for media queries and pseudo-selectors as well.

Alternatively, you can write your own wrapper around your style object. Keep in mind that you are creating your styles in Javascript and on the client, so you know what browser you are running on and you should be able to use only the prefix you need.

Something like this:

var ContainerStyle = {
  display: (browser.webkit) ? '-webkit-flex' : 'flex',
  //flexDirection: 'row', not here!
};

// but here:
if (browser.webkit) {
    ContainerStyle.WebkitFlexDirection = 'row'
}

Of course you can put all this in a module and pass it the style that needs mangling before applying. I believe Radium (similarly to other libraries) does something similar in a sense (although I think they just output the whole prefixed CSS properties rather than selecting).

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