The accepted answer by Adam (flex: 1 1 0) works perfectly for flexbox containers whose width is either fixed, or determined by an ancestor. Situations where you want the children to fit the container.
However, you may have a situation where you want the container to fit the children, with the children equally sized based on the largest child. You can make a flexbox container fit its children by either:
- setting
position: absolute and not setting width or right, or
- place it inside a wrapper with
display: inline-block
For such flexbox containers, the accepted answer does NOT work, the children are not sized equally. I presume that this is a limitation of flexbox, since it behaves the same in Chrome, Firefox and Safari.
The solution is to use a grid instead of a flexbox.
When you run this snippet, make sure to click on full page to see the effect properly.
body {
margin: 1em;
}
.wrap-inline-block {
display: inline-block;
}
#div0, #div1, #div2, #div3, #div4 {
border: 1px solid #888;
padding: 0.5em;
text-align: center;
white-space: nowrap;
}
#div2, #div4 {
position: absolute;
left: 1em;
}
#div0>*, #div1>*, #div2>*, #div3>*, #div4>* {
margin: 0.5em;
color: white;
background-color: navy;
padding: 0.5em;
}
#div0, #div1, #div2 {
display: flex;
}
#div0>*, #div1>*, #div2>* {
flex: 1 1 0;
}
#div0 {
margin-bottom: 1em;
}
#div2 {
top: 15.5em;
}
#div3, #div4 {
display: grid;
grid-template-columns: repeat(3,1fr);
}
#div4 {
top: 28.5em;
}
<p>Normal scenario — flexbox where the children adjust to fit the container — and the children are made equal size by setting {flex: 1 1 0}</p>
<div id="div0">
<div>
Flexbox
</div>
<div>
Width determined by viewport
</div>
<div>
All child elements are equal size with {flex: 1 1 0}
</div>
</div>
<p>Now we want to have the container fit the children, but still have the children all equally sized, based on the largest child. We can see that {flex: 1 1 0} has no effect.</p>
<div class="wrap-inline-block">
<div id="div1">
<div>
Flexbox
</div>
<div>
Inside inline-block
</div>
<div>
We want all children to be the size of this text
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div id="div2">
<div>
Flexbox
</div>
<div>
Absolutely positioned
</div>
<div>
We want all children to be the size of this text
</div>
</div>
<br><br><br><br><br><br>
<p>So let's try a grid instead. Aha! That's what we want!</p>
<div class="wrap-inline-block">
<div id="div3">
<div>
Grid
</div>
<div>
Inside inline-block
</div>
<div>
We want all children to be the size of this text
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div id="div4">
<div>
Grid
</div>
<div>
Absolutely positioned
</div>
<div>
We want all children to be the size of this text
</div>
</div>
flexproperty is a shorthand property for theflex-grow,flex-shrinkandflex-basisproperties. It's recommended to use the shorthand over the individual properties as the shorthand correctly resets any unspecified components to accommodate common uses. The initial value is0 1 auto. – Lion