What is the best way to design lists that adjust to different screen sizes by incorporating multiple columns within the available width?

Back in my old fixed-width days, I had a clever method of distributing data across three columns by dividing the number of elements by three. It worked pretty efficiently.

Now in this modern responsive world, my current solution involves splitting data into fixed-size buckets (let's say 5) and floating the chunked lists to the left:

While this method is effective for longer lists, it can result in wasted horizontal pixels when dealing with smaller lists. Additionally, if one element happens to be extra wide, it can disrupt the flow of the layout.

Currently, I am using Bootstrap3 but I'm open to exploring a pure CSS solution for this issue.

Is there an optimal way to create responsive multi-column lists that adapt to the available width on different devices?

htmlcssresponsive-designtwitter-bootstrap-3

Answer №1

Imagine creating three responsive columns side by side:

Update: included a media query to transform the 3 columns into 1 column

Check out the jsFiddle here

<div class="outer">
    <div class="inner1">Hello</div>
    <div class="inner2">World</div>
    <div class="inner3">!</div>
</div>

.outer {
    width: 100%;
}
.inner1 {
    clear: both;
    float: left;
    display:inline-block;
    width: 32%;
}
.inner2 {
    display:inline-block;
    width: 32%;
    margin-left: 2%;

}
.inner3 {
    display:inline-block;
    width: 32%;
    margin-left: 2%;
}

@media only screen and (max-width: 420px) {   /* small mobile sizes */

.inner1, .inner2, .inner3 {
    display:block;
    width:100%;
    }
}

This updated Fiddle now includes the media query that converts the 3 columns layout into a single column on screens with widths of 420 pixels or less

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