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Is it safe/acceptable when using flex containers to also use margin-top(bottom, left, right) and padding to shift a little space either, in between elements or to the left/right? Or is it better to use the flex-basis in combination with defined widths?

Theodore Steiner
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    Please clarify your specific problem or add additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it’s hard to tell exactly what you're asking. – Paulie_D Dec 01 '16 at 16:50
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    What do you mean by 'safe', 'acceptable', and 'better'? Safe from what? Better how? – BSMP Dec 01 '16 at 16:51
  • Related: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20626685/better-way-to-set-distance-between-flexbox-items –  Dec 01 '16 at 17:15

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I think a better way to put your question is

Is margin & padding a "flex-way" to arrange elements inside a flex container? - Still doesn't make much sense but I guess the answer should explain why.

Answer

Flexbox(flexible box) is a layout concept & just provides a more efficient way to lay out & distribute space among its elements inside a flex container & gives you extra power to control your elements with unique properties like order, flex-grow, flex-shrink etc. - Very similar to what a grid layout does. Now you wouldn't ask a question like - "Can you use grid frameworks like Bootstrap along with margin/padding?" would you?

A simple answer to your question - Ofcourse you can, it all depends on your requirements. Its subjective not wrong/right to use them with flex. So yes, you definitely can use margin/padding in conjuncture with Flexbox and if your requirements demands it(which most of the time is the case) or you could just go complete "flex-way" using flex-basis(similar to width) etc. Sometimes when these won't suffice you will have to use padding/margin which again is very much safe/acceptable(I don't know what that means here though - however you take it).

Just need to understand that when you have defined a container as flex you cannot use few block properties like text-align etc.

Hope you got the right perspective.

Nikhil Nanjappa
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