inline-flex
A child container with display: inline-flex does not automatically fill the parent container. Its size depends on its content and any additional styles applied to it.
flex
A child container with display: flex automatically fills the parent container's width because flex behaves like a block-level element, which expands to fit the parent's available width by default.
Example
HTML
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8" />
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="src/style.css" />
</head>
<body>
<h1>inline-flex</h1>
<div class="container">
<div class="inline-flex-c">
<div class="child">child 1</div>
<div class="child">child 2</div>
</div>
</div>
<h1>flex</h1>
<div class="container">
<div class="flex-c">
<div class="child">child 1</div>
<div class="child">child 2</div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
CSS
body {
background: transparent;
color: #fcbe24;
padding: 0 24px;
margin: 0;
height: 100vh;
font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen,
Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Open Sans', 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;
}
.container {
background-color: white;
color: black;
}
.inline-flex-c {
display: inline-flex;
background-color: palevioletred;
}
.flex-c {
display: flex;
background-color: chocolate;
}
.child{
border-color: greenyellow;
border-style: solid;
}
Result
The flex container stretches to occupy the full width of its parent container. In contrast, the inline-flex container only occupies the width required by its content.
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