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Div re-order with CSS

Does anybody know of any examples or tutorials on how to achieve the below:

On desktop the layout will be: Desktop layout

On mobile the layout will change to: Mobile Layout

As you can see, I want box 2 and box 3 to re-order and swap positions on mobile

Does anybody have any tips or advice?

Solution

  • Depending on what browsers you need to support you could use the flex-box. Using a media query for screen size you could then set the order of the second and third boxes to switch below a certain screen width.

    I've done a pen with a short example. I'd also recommend the CSS Tricks Complete Guide to Flexbox which talks about how to use flex far better than I can.

    EDIT:

    The basic principle would be to set the parent element (e.g., container) to display: flex ; this generates the flexbox and allows you to set different parameters for the children.

    Using the following HTML:

    <div class="container">
  <div class="box first">
    Box 1
  </div>
  <div class="box second">
    Box 2
  </div>
  <div class="box third">
    Box 3
  </div>
</div>

    If I set display:flex on .container, I can then set whether the content should display in a row or column, should wrap down a line, have space between or around the elements, etc. I've set the main rule to be a wrapping row using flex-flow (which is a shorthand for two other flex properties, including flex-direction which I need later), with space between the elements.

    .container{
  display:flex;
  flex-flow: row wrap;
  justify-content:space-between;
}

    I then use a media query so when the browser is narrower than a specified width, the flex-direction gets changed from row to column

    @media screen and (max-width:600px){
  .container {
    flex-direction:column
  }
 }

    Then, in the same media query, I need to tell the elements that I want to re-order what order they should be in:

    @media screen and (max-width:600px){
  .container {
    flex-direction:column
  }
  .second{
    order: 3;
  }
  .third{
    order: 2
  }
}

    Sometimes I've noticed that order needs to be defined for all the elements, so you might need to set it for the first block and keep it as order: 1 . From the pen linked to above, it doesn't seem to be the case here, but it something to keep an eye out for in other projects.