What are the differences between flex-basis and width in Flexbox ?
This article describes the difference between the flex-basis and width property along with examples of usage. The flex-basis property defines the initial size of flex-items depending upon the flex-direction value. It has the following additional properties that can change its behaviour:
- The flex-direction value can be set to row or column. If its value is row, it defines the width and if its value is column, it defines the height.
- The flex-basis property can be applied only to flex-items and width property can be applied to all.
- When using flex property, all the three properties of flex-items i.e, flex-row, flex-shrink and flex-basis can be combined into one declaration, but using width, doing the same thing would require multiple lines of code.
- If flex-direction value is set to be column, then for sizing flex-items horizontally width property is used.
The below examples show the differences between flex-basis and the width and height property:
Example 1: Using flex-basis when flex-direction is set to row.
HTML
<!DOCTYPE html><html> <head> <title>FlexBox</title> <style> body { background: #eee; } h1 { color: green; } .wrapper { width: 100%; margin: 0 auto; } .flex-container { display: flex; background: #fff; flex-wrap: wrap; flex-direction: row; } .box { /* Since flex-direction is set to row therefore flex-basis defines the width. Either of the width property or flex-basis property can be used as both perform a similar task in this case. */ height: 100px; flex-basis: 600px; } .one { background: red; } .two { background: blue; } .three { background: green; } </style></head> <body> <h1>GeeksForGeeks</h1> <h2>Flex-basis vs Width </h2> <br> <div class="wrapper"> <div class="flex-container"> <div class="box one"></div> <div class="box two"></div> <div class="box three"></div> </div> </div></body> </html> |
Output:
Example 2: Using flex-basis when flex-direction is set to column.
HTML
<!DOCTYPE html><html> <head> <title>FlexBox</title> <style> body { background: #eee; } h1 { color: green; } .wrapper { width: 100%; margin: 0 auto; } .flex-container { display: flex; background: #fff; flex-wrap: wrap; flex-direction: column; } .box { /* Since flex-direction is set to column therefore flex-basis defines the height and hence overrides the height property. The height of flex-item will therefore be 80px. The width property has to be separately assigned a horizontal width. */ height: 100px; width: 100px; flex-basis: 80px; } .one { background: red; } .two { background: blue; } .three { background: green; } </style></head> <body> <h1>GeeksForGeeks</h1> <h2>Flex-basis vs Width </h2> <br> <div class="wrapper"> <div class="flex-container"> <div class="box one"></div> <div class="box two"></div> <div class="box three"></div> </div> </div></body> </html> |
Output:
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