[html] Fluid width with equally spaced DIVs

I have a fluid width container DIV.

Within this I have 4 DIVs all 300px x 250px...

<div id="container">
   <div class="box1"> </div>
   <div class="box2"> </div>
   <div class="box3"> </div>
   <div class="box4"> </div>
</div>

What I want to happen is box 1 to be floated left, box 4 to be floated right and box 2 and 3 to be spaced evenly between them. I want the spacing to be fluid as well so as the browser is made smaller the space becomes smaller also.

in jQuery you might target the Parent directly.

THIS IS USEFUL IF YOU DO NOT KNOW EXACTLY HOW MANY CHILDREN WILL BE ADDED DYNAMICALLY or IF YOU JUST CAN'T FIGURE OUT THEIR NUMBER.

var tWidth=0;

$('.children').each(function(i,e){
tWidth += $(e).width();

///Example: If the Children have a padding-left of 10px;..
//You could do instead:
tWidth += ($(e).width()+10);

})
$('#parent').css('width',tWidth);

This will let the parent grow horizontally as the children are beng added.

NOTE: This assumes that the '.children' have a width and Height Set

Hope that Helps.

If you know the number of elements per "row" and the width of the container you can use a selector to add a margin to the elements you need to cause a justified look.

I had rows of three divs I wanted justified so used the:

.tile:nth-child(3n+2) { margin: 0 10px }

this allows the center div in each row to have a margin that forces the 1st and 3rd div to the outside edges of the container

Also great for other things like borders background colors etc

Other posts have mentioned flexbox, but if more than one row of items is necessary, flexbox's space-between property fails (see the end of the post)

To date, the only clean solution for this is with the

CSS Grid Layout Module (Codepen demo)

Basically the relevant code necessary boils down to this:

ul {
  display: grid; /* (1) */
  grid-template-columns: repeat(auto-fit, 120px); /* (2) */
  grid-gap: 1rem; /* (3) */
  justify-content: space-between; /* (4) */
  align-content: flex-start; /* (5) */
}

1) Make the container element a grid container

2) Set the grid with an 'auto' amount of columns - as necessary. This is done for responsive layouts. The width of each column will be 120px. (Note the use of auto-fit (as apposed to auto-fill) which (for a 1-row layout) collapses empty tracks to 0 - allowing the items to expand to take up the remaining space. (check out this demo to see what I'm talking about) ).

3) Set gaps/gutters for the grid rows and columns - here, since want a 'space-between' layout - the gap will actually be a minimum gap because it will grow as necessary.

4) and 5) - Similar to flexbox.

body {_x000D_
  margin: 0;_x000D_
}_x000D_
ul {_x000D_
  display: grid;_x000D_
  grid-template-columns: repeat(auto-fit, 120px);_x000D_
  grid-gap: 1rem;_x000D_
  justify-content: space-between;_x000D_
  align-content: flex-start;_x000D_
  _x000D_
  /* boring properties: */_x000D_
  list-style: none;_x000D_
  width: 90vw;_x000D_
  height: 90vh;_x000D_
  margin: 2vh auto;_x000D_
  border: 5px solid green;_x000D_
  padding: 0;_x000D_
  overflow: auto;_x000D_
}_x000D_
li {_x000D_
  background: tomato;_x000D_
  height: 120px;_x000D_
}

<ul>_x000D_
  <li></li>_x000D_
  <li></li>_x000D_
  <li></li>_x000D_
  <li></li>_x000D_
  <li></li>_x000D_
  <li></li>_x000D_
  <li></li>_x000D_
  <li></li>_x000D_
  <li></li>_x000D_
  <li></li>_x000D_
</ul>

Codepen demo (Resize to see the effect)

Browser Support - Caniuse

Currently supported by Chrome (Blink), Firefox, Safari and Edge! ... with partial support from IE (See this post by Rachel Andrew)

NB:

Flexbox's space-between property works great for one row of items, but when applied to a flex container which wraps it's items - (with flex-wrap: wrap) - fails, because you have no control over the alignment of the last row of items; the last row will always be justified (usually not what you want)

To demonstrate:

body {_x000D_
  margin: 0;_x000D_
}_x000D_
ul {_x000D_
  _x000D_
  display: flex;_x000D_
  justify-content: space-between;_x000D_
  flex-wrap: wrap;_x000D_
  align-content: flex-start;_x000D_
  _x000D_
  list-style: none;_x000D_
  width: 90vw;_x000D_
  height: 90vh;_x000D_
  margin: 2vh auto;_x000D_
  border: 5px solid green;_x000D_
  padding: 0;_x000D_
  overflow: auto;_x000D_
  _x000D_
}_x000D_
li {_x000D_
  background: tomato;_x000D_
  width: 110px;_x000D_
  height: 80px;_x000D_
  margin-bottom: 1rem;_x000D_
}

<ul>_x000D_
  <li></li>_x000D_
  <li></li>_x000D_
  <li></li>_x000D_
  <li></li>_x000D_
  <li></li>_x000D_
  <li></li>_x000D_
  <li></li>_x000D_
  <li></li>_x000D_
</ul>

Codepen (Resize to see what i'm talking about)

Further reading on CSS grids:

• MDN
• Jen Simmons - Learn CSS grid
• A Complete Guide to CSS Grid | Codrops CSS Reference
• A Complete Guide to Grid - CSS Tricks

If css3 is an option, this can be done using the css calc() function.

Case 1: Justifying boxes on a single line ( FIDDLE )

Markup is simple - a bunch of divs with some container element.

CSS looks like this:

div
{
    height: 100px;
    float: left;
    background:pink;
    width: 50px;
    margin-right: calc((100% - 300px) / 5 - 1px); 
}
div:last-child
{
    margin-right:0;
}

where -1px to fix an IE9+ calc/rounding bug - see here

Case 2: Justifying boxes on multiple lines ( FIDDLE )

Here, in addition to the calc() function, media queries are necessary.

The basic idea is to set up a media query for each #columns states, where I then use calc() to work out the margin-right on each of the elements (except the ones in the last column).

This sounds like a lot of work, but if you're using LESS or SASS this can be done quite easily

(It can still be done with regular css, but then you'll have to do all the calculations manually, and then if you change your box width - you have to work out everything again)

Below is an example using LESS: (You can copy/paste this code here to play with it, [it's also the code I used to generate the above mentioned fiddle])

@min-margin: 15px;
@div-width: 150px;

@3divs: (@div-width * 3);
@4divs: (@div-width * 4);
@5divs: (@div-width * 5);
@6divs: (@div-width * 6);
@7divs: (@div-width * 7);

@3divs-width: (@3divs + @min-margin * 2);
@4divs-width: (@4divs + @min-margin * 3);
@5divs-width: (@5divs + @min-margin * 4);
@6divs-width: (@6divs + @min-margin * 5);
@7divs-width: (@7divs + @min-margin * 6);


*{margin:0;padding:0;}

.container
{
    overflow: auto;
    display: block;
    min-width: @3divs-width;
}
.container > div
{
    margin-bottom: 20px;
    width: @div-width;
    height: 100px;
    background: blue;
    float:left;
    color: #fff;
    text-align: center;
}

@media (max-width: @3divs-width) {
    .container > div {  
        margin-right: @min-margin;
    }
    .container > div:nth-child(3n) {  
        margin-right: 0;
    }
}

@media (min-width: @3divs-width) and (max-width: @4divs-width) {
    .container > div {  
        margin-right: ~"calc((100% - @{3divs})/2 - 1px)";
    }
    .container > div:nth-child(3n) {  
        margin-right: 0;
    }
}

@media (min-width: @4divs-width) and (max-width: @5divs-width) {
    .container > div {  
        margin-right: ~"calc((100% - @{4divs})/3 - 1px)";
    }
    .container > div:nth-child(4n) {  
        margin-right: 0;
    }
}

@media (min-width: @5divs-width) and (max-width: @6divs-width) {
    .container > div {  
        margin-right: ~"calc((100% - @{5divs})/4 - 1px)";
    }
    .container > div:nth-child(5n) {  
        margin-right: 0;
    }
}

@media (min-width: @6divs-width){
    .container > div {  
        margin-right: ~"calc((100% - @{6divs})/5 - 1px)";
    }
    .container > div:nth-child(6n) {  
        margin-right: 0;
    }
}

So basically you first need to decide a box-width and a minimum margin that you want between the boxes.

With that, you can work out how much space you need for each state.

Then, use calc() to calcuate the right margin, and nth-child to remove the right margin from the boxes in the final column.

The advantage of this answer over the accepted answer which uses text-align:justify is that when you have more than one row of boxes - the boxes on the final row don't get 'justified' eg: If there are 2 boxes remaining on the final row - I don't want the first box to be on the left and the next one to be on the right - but rather that the boxes follow each other in order.

Regarding browser support: This will work on IE9+,Firefox,Chrome,Safari6.0+ - (see here for more details) However i noticed that on IE9+ there's a bit of a glitch between media query states. [if someone knows how to fix this i'd really like to know :) ] <-- FIXED HERE

This worked for me with 5 images in diferent sizes.

1. Create a container div
2. An Unordered list for the images
3. On css the unordened must be displayed vertically and without bullets
4. Justify content of container div

This works because of justify-content:space-between, and it's on a list, displayed horizontally.

On CSS

 #container {
            display: flex;
            justify-content: space-between;
 }
    #container ul li{ display:inline; list-style-type:none;
}

On html

<div id="container"> 
  <ul>  
        <li><img src="box1.png"><li>
        <li><img src="box2.png"><li>
        <li><img src="box3.png"><li>
        <li><img src="box4.png"><li>
        <li><img src="box5.png"><li>
    </ul>
</div>

The easiest way to do this now is with a flexbox:

http://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to-flexbox/

The CSS is then simply:

#container {
    display: flex;
    justify-content: space-between;
}

demo: http://jsfiddle.net/QPrk3/

However, this is currently only supported by relatively recent browsers (http://caniuse.com/flexbox). Also, the spec for flexbox layout has changed a few times, so it's possible to cover more browsers by additionally including an older syntax:

http://css-tricks.com/old-flexbox-and-new-flexbox/

http://css-tricks.com/using-flexbox/