Gain insights into designing mobile-responsive web layouts using Flexbox. Delve into Box Model basics, Flexbox containers, and item alignment, and apply your knowledge to create stunning, mobile-first websites.

CBCA - CSS with Flexbox (Intermediate)-01.jpg

In this course, you will get hands-on experience in designing mobile-responsive web layouts using Flexbox. You will start with the basics like the Box Model and the process of layouting.

You will then move on to advanced concepts such as Flexbox containers, and aligning individual Flexbox items. Near the end of the course, you will put everything you just learned into practice. You will work on a project that focuses on developing a mobile-first website where you’ll experiment with page layout, headers, footers, and a lot more.

By the end of this course, you will be able to use Flexbox in your own projects to create beautiful layouts.

Designing Web Layouts with CSS and Flexbox

# Creating a menu markup

Once we are ready with the layout, we can identify a couple of components that are easy to design without breaking them up further.

The first component that is easy enough to create is the main menu. We will use __*skip links*__ to go to different sections of the layout. A skip link is an anchor having an `href` attribute pointing at a node with an id attribute.

The menu looks as follows:

```html
    <header>
      <h2 class="header-title">Flexbox Blog</h2>
      <nav class="header-navigation">
        <a href="#home" class="nav-link">Home</a>
        <a href="#posts" class="nav-link">Blog</a> 
        <a href="#contact" class="nav-link">Contact</a>
      </nav>
    </header>
```

Let’s add the corresponding id attributes to the body, blogposts container, and the contact container. If this page was a real website, the skip links would work fine. However, in the editor below, the skip links may not be functional. We will just focus on writing the menu style, and ignore the fallback implementation of automatic scrolling.

# Positioning the menu with Flexbox

We can identify the need for two Flexboxes to position the menu and the title.

First, we need to position the title and the nav next to each other by making the `header` node a Flex container.

```css
header {
  padding-top: 20px;
  display: flex;
  justify-content: space-between;
}

.header-title {
  margin-left: 20px;
}
```

Second, we need to play around with the spacing between the individual menu items by making the `nav` node a Flex container.

```css
.header-navigation {
  display: flex;
  justify-content: flex-end;
}

.nav-link {
  margin-right: 20px;
}
```

After all the changes are performed, the page looks as follows:

# Creating a menu markup

Once we are ready with the layout, we can identify a couple of components that are easy to design without breaking them up further.

The first component that is easy enough to create is the main menu. We will use __*skip links*__ to go to different sections of the layout. A skip link is an anchor having an `href` attribute pointing at a node with an id attribute.

The menu looks as follows:

```html
    <header>
      <h2>Flexbox Blog</h2>
      <nav>
        <a href="#home">Home</a>
        <a href="#posts">Blog</a> 
        <a href="#contact">Contact</a>
      </nav>
    </header>
```

Let’s add the corresponding id attributes to the body, blogposts container, and the contact container. If this page was a real website, the skip links would work fine. However, in the editor below, the skip links may not be functional. We will just focus on writing the menu style, and ignore the fallback implementation of automatic scrolling.

# Positioning the menu with Flexbox

We can identify the need for two Flexboxes to position the menu and the title.

First, we need to position the title and the nav next to each other by making the `header` node a Flex container.

```css
header {
  padding-top: 20px;
  display: flex;
  justify-content: space-between;
}

.header-title {
  margin-left: 20px;
}
```

Second, we need to play around with the spacing between the individual menu items by making the `nav` node a Flex container.

```css
.header-navigation {
  display: flex;
  justify-content: flex-end;
}

.nav-link {
  margin-right: 20px;
}
```

After all the changes are performed, the page looks as follows:

In this lesson, we will create a header component with skip links.

Getting Started

Using Flexbox Containers

Aligning Individual Flexbox Items

Designing a Mobile-first Website Using Flexbox

Flexbox Conclusion and Next Steps

Header Component Layout

Creating a menu markup