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CSS

Will CSS Layout and positioning begin to make much more sense after learn Flexbox and Bootstrap?

As of right now, I'm still having trouble digesting CSS layout and position. I wanted to know if CSS layout and positioning becomes clearer and easier once learning Flexbox and Bootstrap.

3 Answers

An addition to what Steven said

Bootstrap is a front-end framework so it provides you with the styling already, you could benefit from bootstrap by inspecting elements and see how they create certain components. For example, if you were curious about how to create a card component you can inspect that element and see what styling they use, so yes bootstrap will help in that sense.

Flexbox will definitely make more sense for layout, what you initially learn in Treehouse for layout is the float property, however, we typically use flexbox now as its more responsive and flexible so flexbox is an absolute must. what you'll also find is flexbox just naturally works better at being flexible so it's easy to understand once you learn the basics.

CSS Grids is a good one too, but before you even look at that, understand flexbox first, its essentially a 2-dimensional layout whereas flexbox is a 1-dimensional layout. That being said, CSS Grids is not supported on IE so many developers, including myself tend to never use this for complete browser support, you can create pretty much any CSS Grid layout with flexbox anyways.

Hope this helps

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,248 Points

Bootstrap will probably not help to learn CSS, since it mostly handles all the CSS for you "behind the scenes". Your interaction with Bootstrap will primarily be defining classes on your elements.

Flexbox, on the other hand, is valuable part of CSS useful for layout. It's a bit of "its own thing" though, so it is perhaps more of an alternative approach than an extension of the other layout methods you've used before. Still, it's a great addition to your CSS "toolkit".

Another even more modern layout technique is CSS Grids, you should also consider learning that as well to further expand your set of layout skills.

One thing I can tell you for sure is I no longer use floats for positioning, I only use floats when I want my content to flow around something. As far as flexbox and bootstrap go, flexbox replaces many of the difficulties that we faced like centering the content, as css gets more powerful day by day and flexbox gets better browser support I will highly recommend you to use nex CSS layout techniques as they are easy once you get your basics down. And as far as Bootstrap goes I have only used it because of its grid flexibility other than that good luck with learning.