Flexbox and Internet Explorer 11 (display:flex in <html>?)

Html Problem Overview

I am planning to move away from "floaty" layouts and use CSS flexbox for future projects. I was delighted to see that all major browsers in their current versions seem to support (in one way or another) flexbox.

I headed over to "Solved by Flexbox" to look at some examples. However the "Sticky Footer" example does not seem to work in Internet Explorer 11. I played around a bit and got it to work by adding display:flex to the <html> and width:100% to the <body>

So my first question is: Can anybody explain that logic to me? I just fiddled around and it worked, but I don't quite understand why it worked that way...

Then there is the "Media Object" example that works in all browsers except for - you guessed it - Internet Explorer. I fiddled around with that, too, but without any success.

My second question therefore is: Is there a "clean" possibility to get the "Media Object" example working in Internet Explorer?

Html Solutions

Solution 1 - Html

According to http://caniuse.com/#feat=flexbox:

"IE10 and IE11 default values for flex are 0 0 auto rather than 0 1 auto, as per the draft spec, as of September 2013"

So in plain words, if somewhere in your CSS you have something like this: flex:1 , that is not translated the same way in all browsers. Try changing it to 1 0 0 and I believe you will immediately see that it -kinda- works.

The problem is that this solution will probably mess up firefox, but then you can use some hacks to target only Mozilla and change it back:

@-moz-document url-prefix() {
 #flexible-content{
      flex: 1;
 	}
}

Since flexbox is a W3C Candidate and not official, browsers tend to give different results, but I guess that will change in the immediate future.

If someone has a better answer I would like to know!

Solution 2 - Html

Use another flex container to fix the min-height issue in IE10 and IE11:

HTML

<div class="ie-fixMinHeight">
    <div id="page">
	    <div id="header"></div>
	    <div id="content"></div>
	    <div id="footer"></div>
    </div>
</div>

CSS

.ie-fixMinHeight {
    display:flex;
}

#page {
    min-height:100vh;
    width:100%;
    display:flex;
    flex-direction:column;
}

#content {
    flex-grow:1;
}

See a working demo.

Don't use flexbox layout directly on body because it screws up elements inserted via jQuery plugins (autocomplete, popup, etc.).
Don't use height:100% or height:100vh on your container because the footer will stick at the bottom of window and won't adapt to long content.
Use flex-grow:1 rather than flex:1 cause IE10 and IE11 default values for flex are 0 0 auto and not 0 1 auto.

Solution 3 - Html

You just need flex:1; It will fix issue for the IE11. I second Odisseas. Additionally assign 100% height to html,body elements.

CSS changes:

html, body{
    height:100%;
}
body {
    border: red 1px solid;
    min-height: 100vh;
    display: -ms-flexbox;
    display: -webkit-flex;
    display: flex;
    -ms-flex-direction: column;
    -webkit-flex-direction: column;
    flex-direction: column;
}
header {
    background: #23bcfc;
}
main {
    background: #87ccfc;
    -ms-flex: 1;
    -webkit-flex: 1;
    flex: 1;
}
footer {
    background: #dd55dd;
}

working url: http://jsfiddle.net/3tpuryso/13/

Solution 4 - Html

Sometimes it's as simple as adding: '-ms-' in front of the style Like -ms-flex-flow: row wrap; to get it to work also.

Solution 5 - Html

Here is an example of using flex that also works in Internet Explorer 11 and Chrome.

HTML

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=Edge,chrome=1" >
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" >
<title>Flex Test</title>
<style>
html, body {
    margin: 0px;
    padding: 0px;
    height: 100vh;
}
.main {
    display: -webkit-flex;
    display: flex;
    -ms-flex-direction: row;
    flex-direction: row;
    align-items: stretch;
    min-height: 100vh;
}

.main::after {
  content: '';
  height: 100vh;
  width: 0;
  overflow: hidden;
  visibility: hidden;
  float: left;
}

.left {
    width: 200px;
    background: #F0F0F0;
    flex-shrink: 0;
}

.right {
    flex-grow: 1;
    background: yellow;
}
</style>
</head>

<body>
<div class="main">
    <div class="left">
        <div style="height: 300px;">
        </div>
    </div>

    <div class="right">
        <div style="height: 1000px;">
            test test test
        </div>
    </div>
</div>
</body>
</html>

Content Type	Original Author	Original Content on Stackoverflow
Question	Kodekan	View Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - Html	Odisseas	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 2 - Html	BeliG	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 3 - Html	Ashok Kumar Gupta	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 4 - Html	Marsel Gray	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 5 - Html	BadTree Lu	View Answer on Stackoverflow