Div re-order with CSS

Question

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

On desktop the layout will be:

On mobile the layout will change to:

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?

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

flexbox can do that very easily

.wrap {
  display: flex;
}
.box {
  height: 150px;
  border: 1px solid green;
  flex: 1;
  margin: 25px;
  text-align: center;
  line-height: 150px;
  font-size: 36px;
}
.box:first-child {
  order: 1;
}
.box:nth-child(2) {
  order: 2;
}
.box:nth-child(3) {
  order: 3;
}
@media screen and (max-width: 760px) {
  .wrap {
    flex-direction: column;
  }
  .box:nth-child(2) {
    order: 3;
  }
  .box:nth-child(3) {
    order: 2;
  }
}

<div class="wrap">
  <div class="box">1</div>
  <div class="box">2</div>
  <div class="box">3</div>
</div>

Codepen Demo