How to Create a Row of Justified Elements with Fluid Spacing Using CSS

How do I create a row of justified elements with fluid spacing using CSS?

Use the following components:

  • A text-align:justify container for the row
  • An inline-block container for each column
  • An inline-block placeholder with width:100% to stretch the inside

`

    /*Row container is justified*/    #container { width: 100%; text-align: justify; }
/*Column container and placeholder are inline-block*/ object, span { display: inline-block; }
/*Placeholder is stretched to enforce shrink-wrapping*/ span { width: 100%; }
       <!--row-->      <div id="container">        <!--column-->        <object>          <!--content-->          <div>          foo          </div>        </object>        <object>          <div>          bar          </div>        </object>        <object>          <div>          baz          </div>        </object>        <object>          <div>          bop          </div>        </object>        <object>          <div>          bip          </div>        </object>        <!--placeholder-->        <span></span>      </div>

Create Center-Justified Menu in Fluid Layout

1) Use text-align: justify; on your list and center it with margin: 0 auto;

2) Add a pseudo element to stretch the items to max width

FIDDLE (I added a border to visualize the efect)

.wpr {  border-top: 2px solid #111;  border-bottom: 2px solid #111;}ul {  text-align: justify;  min-width: 500px;  width: 80%;  display: block;  margin: 0 auto;  border: 1px solid tomato;}ul:after {  content: '';  display: inline-block;  width: 100%;}li {  display: inline-block;  padding-top: 16px;  box-sizing: border-box;}
<div class="wpr">  <ul>    <li><a href="#">VISIT</a>    </li>    <li><a href="#">EVENTS</a>    </li>    <li><a href="#">EXHIBITIONS</a>    </li>    <li><a href="#">COLLECTIONS</a>    </li>    <li><a href="#">LEARN</a>    </li>  </ul></div>

Fluid width with equally spaced DIVs

See: http://jsfiddle.net/thirtydot/EDp8R/

  • This works in IE6+ and all modern browsers!
  • I've halved your requested dimensions just to make it easier to work with.
  • text-align: justify combined with .stretch is what's handling the positioning.
  • display:inline-block; *display:inline; zoom:1 fixes inline-block for IE6/7, see here.
  • font-size: 0; line-height: 0 fixes a minor issue in IE6.

#container {  border: 2px dashed #444;  height: 125px;  text-align: justify;  -ms-text-justify: distribute-all-lines;  text-justify: distribute-all-lines;  /* just for demo */  min-width: 612px;}
.box1,.box2,.box3,.box4 { width: 150px; height: 125px; vertical-align: top; display: inline-block; *display: inline; zoom: 1}
.stretch { width: 100%; display: inline-block; font-size: 0; line-height: 0}
.box1,.box3 { background: #ccc}
.box2,.box4 { background: #0ff}
<div id="container">  <div class="box1"></div>  <div class="box2"></div>  <div class="box3"></div>  <div class="box4"></div>  <span class="stretch"></span></div>

Better way to set distance between flexbox items

  • Flexbox doesn't have collapsing margins.
  • Flexbox doesn't have anything akin to border-spacing for tables (edit: CSS property gap fulfills this role in newer browsers, Can I use)

Therefore achieving what you are asking for is a bit more difficult.

In my experience, the "cleanest" way that doesn't use :first-child/:last-child and works without any modification on flex-wrap:wrap is to set padding:5px on the container and margin:5px on the children. That will produce a 10px gap between each child and between each child and their parent.

Demo

.upper {
margin: 30px;
display: flex;
flex-direction: row;
width: 300px;
height: 80px;
border: 1px red solid;

padding: 5px; /* this */
}

.upper > div {
flex: 1 1 auto;
border: 1px red solid;
text-align: center;

margin: 5px; /* and that, will result in a 10px gap */
}

.upper.mc /* multicol test */ {
flex-direction: column;
flex-wrap: wrap;
width: 200px;
height: 200px;
}
<div class="upper">
<div>aaa<br/>aaa</div>
<div>aaa</div>
<div>aaa<br/>aaa</div>
<div>aaa<br/>aaa<br/>aaa</div>
<div>aaa</div>
<div>aaa</div>
</div>

<div class="upper mc">
<div>aaa<br/>aaa</div>
<div>aaa</div>
<div>aaa<br/>aaa</div>
<div>aaa<br/>aaa<br/>aaa</div>
<div>aaa</div>
<div>aaa</div>
</div>

Fluid navigation items of different widths with equidistant spacing

I thought about this for a while and came up with two reasonable approaches, both of which are pretty good but not exactly pixel perfect. One is CSS based only and the second is aided by jQuery (JavaScript).

CSS Approach - pretty good approximation

Consider the following HTML:

<ul class="nav ex1">
<li class="first"><a href="#">Home</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Collections</a></li>
<li class="tight"><a href="#">About Us</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Slocklists</a></li>
<li class="tight"><a href="#">Trade Enquiries</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Press</a></li>
<li class="last"><a href="#">Contact Us</a></li>
</ul>

I added some classes as hooks for the styling.

The CSS is as follows:

.nav.ex1 {
outline: 1px dashed blue;
width: 100%;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
display: table;
}
.nav.ex1 li {
display: table-cell;
outline: 1px dotted gray;
width: 20%;
white-space: pre;
text-align: center;
}
.nav.ex1 li.first {
width: 1%;
}
.nav.ex1 li.last {
width: 1%;
}
.nav.ex1 li.tight {
width: 1%;
}

In Example 1, the ul.nav parent container uses display: table and width: 100%. The child li elements are table-cell's. I added white-space: pre to prevent some of the links from wrapping into two lines, and text-align: center to keep the text centered.

The trick is to force some of the table-cell's to shrink-to-fit the text, and you can do this by setting width: 1% which is non-zero but too small to hold the text (unless your screen is 10,000 pixels wide). I shrink-to-fit the first and last cells which forces them to align to the left and right edges of the parent container. I then force every other table-cell to shrink-to-fit by added the .tight class.

The remaining table's cells will have a width of 20% which will keep them evenly spaced between their two nearest neighbors. HOWEVER, there will be some slight variation in spacing among the links in the row, which is why I call it an approximation.

jQuery Aided Solution

In Example 2, the markup is essentially the same and the CSS is:

.nav.ex2 {
outline: 1px dashed blue;;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
display: block;
overflow: auto;
width: 100%;
}
.nav.ex2 li {
float: left;
display: block;
outline: 1px dotted gray;
width: auto;
}

In this case, the li elements are floated left and I use width: auto.

The trick is to calculate the magic left-margin value and apply it to all the li elements except for the first one.

The jQuery action is:

$(window).resize(function () {
navResizer();
});

// On load, initially, make sure to set the size.
navResizer();

function navResizer() {
var $li_w = 0;
var $ul_w = $(".nav.ex2").innerWidth();

$( ".nav.ex2 li" ).each(function( index ) {
$li_w += $(this).innerWidth();
});

var li_margin = Math.floor(($ul_w-$li_w)/6);
$(".nav.ex2 li").not(".first").css("margin-left",li_margin);
$("p.note").text( "Widths: ul.nav: " + $ul_w + " all li: " + $li_w + " Left margin: " + li_margin);
}

Basically, the action calculates the width of ul.nav ($ul_w), and the total widths of all the li child elements ($li_w).

The left-margin is calculated by ($ul_w - $li_w)/6 where 6 is the number of gaps between the 7 links.

The key line of code is: $(".nav.ex2 li").not(".first").css("margin-left",li_margin);

I use .not(".first") to omit the first li element and then .css to set the left margin.

The one slight defect is at the far right where the link is not quite right justified, but you can fix that by floating the last li to the right.

For the most part, if your link texts were similar in length, you would be hard pressed to distinguish the two. Both approaches are not quite pixel perfect, but pretty good.

Fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/audetwebdesign/xhSfs/

Footnote
I tried some other approaches using text-align: justify and inline-block, but the CSS engine does not treat inline-blocks like regular words, so will not justify a line of inline-blocks.

Setting left-margin to a % value will not quite work at some window widths and the right-most link will not be on the edge as desired.

The jQuery approach has been tried before, see:

Evenly-spaced navigation links that take up entire width of ul in CSS3

Fluid width with equally spaced DIVs + last row left aligned

Ok, here's the damn easy solution with css:

Simply add so many divs of how many in a row would be (in this case 4) and give them a height of 1px.

Nothing to see and all works like charm without javascript.

Here's the new fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/L2mPf/1/

Thanks to @GGG for focusing me back on css and this solution.

How do I remove spacing around elements inside .container-fluid?

Change the class name .container-fluid to something else as that is a bootstrap predefined class.

You can change the class name to anything else you want.

Codepen: https://codepen.io/manaskhandelwal1/pen/mdrzqOM

Vertically centered text, in 8 item justified, fluid width menu in 2 rows and gutters

For such a structure I would use a table, way more handy:

HTML

<table id="wrapper">
<tbody >
<tr>
<td><a href="#">Normal text</a></td>
<td><a href="#">Normal text</a></td>
<td><a href="#">Normal text</a></td>
<td><a href="#">Normal text</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#">longer text longer text longer text</a></td>
<td><a href="#">Normal text</a></td>
<td><a href="#">Normal text</a></td>
<td><a href="#">Normal text</a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

CSS

#wrapper {
col {
max-width: 250px;
}
background: grey;
border-spacing:0;
border-collapse:collapse;
}

tbody {
text-align: justify;
-ms-text-justify: distribute-all-lines;
text-justify: distribute-all-lines;
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
font-size: 0.1px;
}

td {
width: 25%;
height: 100px;
vertical-align: middle;
background-color: #ddd;
font-size: 22px;
color: #000000;
margin-bottom: 1%;
text-align: center;
border: 1px solid black;
}

li a {
text-decoration: none;
}

Fiddle

Managing justify-content: space-between on last row

Use an invisible pseudo-element that occupies the last slot in the container:

.main::after {
height: 0;
width: 30%;
content: "";
}

The height is 0 so that when rows are filled, and the pseudo-element starts the next line, it doesn't add height to the container.

Full code:

.main {  background: #999;  margin: 0 auto;  width: 500px;  display: flex;  flex-wrap: wrap;  justify-content: space-between;}.box {  background: #7ab9d7;  color: #555;  height: 30px;  width: 30%;  margin-bottom: 30px;  text-align: center;  font-size: 30px;  padding-top: 120px;}.main::after {  height: 0;  width: 30%;  content: "";}
<div class="main">  <div class="box">1</div>  <div class="box">2</div>  <div class="box">3</div>  <div class="box">4</div>  <div class="box">5</div></div>


Related Topics



Leave a reply



Submit