How Can Flexbox Achieve Justified Alignment for Variable-Width Elements on the Last Row?

Mastering Flexbox: Achieving Justified Alignment for Variable-Width Elements

In the realm of web design, it's often desirable to align elements in a way that optimizes space and creates a visually pleasing layout. Flexbox has emerged as a powerful tool for achieving this objective, but certain scenarios can present unique challenges.

One such challenge arises when dealing with variable-width items arranged in a flexible container. Consider a list of users, each with a name and an associated number. When wrapped using flexbox, these elements may extend to fill the entire width of the container, creating unsightly gaps on the last line.

The desired behavior is to align the elements on the last row using their natural widths, while ensuring that the elements on all other rows fully utilize the container's width. To achieve this, a technique involving phantom items can be employed.

Solution: Phantom Items

The key to solving this alignment issue is to introduce phantom items that occupy the last slots on the last row. These items are rendered invisible using visibility: hidden, while their flex-grow property ensures that they fill the remaining space on the row.

Implementation

To implement this solution, one can append phantom items to the end of the container. For example, considering a list of 82 users, three phantom items can be created with the following CSS:

.userlist:after {
    content: "";
    flex: 10 0 auto;
    visibility: hidden;
}

An alternative approach involves creating a single phantom item with flex-grow: 10 and targeting it using :last-child or :last-of-type pseudo-classes.

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