by Luke Wroblewski October 22, 2013

In his presentation at Breaking Development in Nashville TN, Stephen Hay shared the latest information about Flexbox. Here's my notes from his talk on Using Content To Define User Experience.

Imagine we could make code so easy that even designers could do it. That's the goal of many design tools: to protect designers from code. Instead, we should aim to make code easier for designers to use.

Designers are not stupid, they are capable of learning and would be happy to add code as another one of their tools. We have to make things easier. Flexbox is a step in the right direction.

It took about 2 years to write the first CSS spec and CSS has been around for 17 years. Now finally we have real layout tools with Flexbox.

CSS Flexbox has changed since the candidate recommendation last year. There's a new Editor's Draft last changed in October.

There are two specs that deal with page layout: Grid layout and template layout. Flexbox is really good for UI component layout.

Flexbox helps us deal with available space, even when we don't know what that space will be; with alignment both horizontally and vertically; and with display and source order differences.

Flexbox Overview