Mastering CSS Flexbox: How to Use the order Property for Flexible Layouts

CSS Flexbox Order

CSS Flexbox is a powerful tool for creating responsive web layouts. We have discussed CSS Flexbox layout and its related properties with examples in our previous post.
In this article, we’ll focus on the order property in Flexbox, which allows you to rearrange the order of elements without changing the source code. This makes Flexbox even more versatile for modern web design. Right from the initial stages, ordering the elements has been quite tricky. CSS Flexbox ordering emphasizes how useful it is for responsive design. For example, when designing a mobile version of a website, you might want the sidebar to appear below the content instead of beside it. Using the order property allows you to achieve this reordering without modifying the HTML structure. When attempting to visually order the elements differently from the source code order, the flexbox order of the elements is very useful.

Cross Browser compatibility

Flexbox is widely supported across all modern browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, and Opera. However, for older browsers like Internet Explorer, you may need to use fallback techniques or check compatibility before relying heavily on Flexbox.

How to Change the Order of Flexbox Items?

Flexbox allows us to reorder the elements without changing their actual position in the source code. You can use the order property to control the order in which items appear visually on the page. Here's how: The order property will work only on the direct flex elements.

By default, all flex items have an order value of 0. This means they will appear in the order they are written in the HTML. You can override this default by setting the order property to any integer, positive or negative. Items with a lower order value appear first in the flex container, while items with higher order values appear later.

Consider the below example:

Changing the Order of the Flexboxes


.box-one{
order:4;
/* Moves the element to the 4th position */ }
.box-two{
order:3;
/* Moves the element to the 3rd position */ }
.box-three{
order:1;
/* Moves the element to the 1st position */ }
.box-four{
order:5;
}
.box-five{
order:6;
}


Changed Order of the Flexbox Items