Your example can be accomplished like this:
<div class="columns">
<div class="column is-half">m:2*</div>
<div class="column">1*</div>
<div class="column">m:*1</div>
</div>
Check this: https://sciter.com/images/wt-langs.png You see the same HTML markup there but in different languages. Text in most of European languages is longer.
This is HTML/CSS Sciter UI that uses flex units and flow property: https://sciter.com/docs/flex-flow/flex-layout.htm
That last part (use of actual content) is what you cannot reproduce using % units in principle.
Hope you've been well. Your 4chan board was hilariously cool.
Your items get distributed along the main axis, using their flex-basis.
When all elements are layed out, flexbox will evaluate how much space is left, or how much overlap there is.
This total remaining space will be distributed among all flex items proportionally to their flex-grow value. A flex-grow value of 2 means "grow twice as much as your siblings if there's spare room" (0 will prevent an element from growing at all, even if there is space left).
So if 3 elements with flex-grow 1--1--2 and 100px basis each where to fill a 400px box, the remaining 100px would be distributed 25--25--50.
Flex-shrink works the other way round. The same 400px-box example with flex-basis 200px and shrink 1--1--2 would result in 150--150--100px wide elements.
That's the thing - nobody knows exactly how it works. Except few developers who actually tried to implement the spec.
Nobody knows why do we need separate flex-shrink and flex-grow. Nobody knows why these are properties and not units so they can be used not just for width/height but for padding, margin, border-width, top/left/bottom/right, size, etc.
Nobody knows why 'flex' is a value of 'display' property and not of some other property orthogonal to display like 'flow' or 'layout'. So we can write something like this:
td.some {
display:table-cell;
flow: horizontal; // a.k.a. flex/row
}
Really, flexbox is the worst CSS module ever published and accepted by W3C.
That's either plain nonsense or trivially true of all css, depending on your definitions.
Flexbox really isn't all that confusing or hard, and it does more than table layouts ever did.
Separate flex-grow and flex-shrink are needed for the same reason there's a min-width and a max-width property. flex-shrink defines if the element is allowed to shrink, and how much it does when needed. flex-grow defines if the element is allowed to grow, and how much when needed. The reason they are unitless values is because they are used to calculate ratios.
I agree that there have been some dubious design decisions, but if you really need to do a table cell with a flex-flowing content you can always stick a wrapper div in the cell.
"you can always stick a wrapper div in the cell" Nice, tag soup forever.
This _is_ how it works, i just didnt have the source at hand and wanted to just exolain the broad mechanism
<table style="width:75%"> // Total width of all three
<tr>
<th width="50%">LeftMargin</th>
<th width="25%">Main</th>
<th width="25%">RightMargin</th>
</tr>
</table>
In the same 10 years (http://www.w3.org/TR/css-flexbox-1/) we were trying to come up with something that can be used instead. And have got that ugly flexbox.
And still... were are my col/rowspans?
Something is terribly wrong with the process.
So we've come somewhere but there is further to go and maybe we didn't need to go in so many circles.
Here's the live HTML I uploaded for testing: http://momentstudio.co.nz/temp/test.html
This page we're on now also runs mostly on tables.
Depends what you'd expect, I suppose. These days, I'd expect the columns to switch to a vertical stacking layout when viewed at a mobile width. I guess maybe it's not "broken", per se, but it's not responsive and certainly pretty limited in how it can be used.
table { display:block; }
.responsive { display: block }
@media(min-size: 768px) { . responsive { display: table }}
The only thing got wrong is that it took a bit long, but current CSS layout techniques are totally awesome today.
Here is an illustration of the idea of flex units:
There should be N-- and preferably only N --obvious ways to do it.
This
{ width:100px;
margin-left:1fr }
So the block is attached to the right side of its container. And so you don't need all those aligns - flex units can do alignment in more flexible ways.
That's obvious indeed.
But those flex-shrink/grow ...
Consider this:
<p>Foo <input style="width:1fr /> bar.</p>
"flex-basis" - defines mysterious "main width" (WTF is wrong with just width?)
"flex-grow" and "flex-shrink" - grow and shrink relative to what?
How to define flexible margins? Like I want left margin to be twice larger than right one and all this to be flexible:
?Effectively flexbox breaks CSS box model that postulates only width/height to define box dimensions.
Why I cannot say just this:
?Where 'fr' are flex units introduced in CSS Grid https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/flex_value
Why two specifications define the same entity (flex weight) by two different mechanisms - by property and by unit?
CSS looks like Christmas tree where each passer-by (Google and Microsoft here) adds its own shiny stuff ...
Is this what we name as modularity of CSS?