Creating Responsive Image Galleries with CSS Flexbox

What is CSS Flexbox?

CSS flexbox is a layout module that allows you to create flexible and responsive layouts. It provides a simple way to align and justify content within a container. Flexbox is ideal for creating one-dimensional layouts, such as rows or columns.

Basic Structure of an Image Gallery

Before we dive into the code, let’s define the basic structure of an image gallery. We will use a container element to wrap our images, and each image will be wrapped in a <figure> element. The <figure> element will also contain a <figcaption> element for the image caption.

<div class="image-gallery">
  <figure>
    <img src="image1.jpg" alt="Image 1">
    <figcaption>Image 1 Caption</figcaption>
  </figure>
  <figure>
    <img src="image2.jpg" alt="Image 2">
    <figcaption>Image 2 Caption</figcaption>
  </figure>
  
</div>

Styling the Image Gallery with CSS Flexbox

To style our image gallery using CSS flexbox, we will add the following styles:

.image-gallery {
  display: flex;
  flex-wrap: wrap;
  justify-content: center;
}

.image-gallery figure {
  margin: 10px;
}

.image-gallery img {
  width: 200px;
  height: 150px;
  object-fit: cover;
}

In this code, we set the container element to display: flex;, which enables flexbox. We also set flex-wrap: wrap; to allow the images to wrap to the next line when the screen width is reduced. Finally, we center the images using justify-content: center;.

We add some margin to each <figure> element to create some space between the images. We also set the width and height of each image using width and height properties, and use object-fit: cover; to ensure the images are scaled proportionally.

Responsive Design

To make our image gallery responsive, we can add some media queries to adjust the layout based on screen size.

@media (max-width: 768px) {
 .image-gallery figure {
    width: 50%;
  }
}

@media (max-width: 480px) {
 .image-gallery figure {
    width: 100%;
  }
}

In this example, we use media queries to adjust the width of each <figure> element based on screen size. On larger screens, the images will be displayed in a row, while on smaller screens, they will stack vertically.

Conclusion

With these simple steps, you can create a responsive image gallery using CSS flexbox. By using flexbox to style our image gallery, we can create a flexible and responsive layout that adapts to different screen sizes.