How to test your UI without resizing browser

The Problem

When working on UI layouts, for testing responsiveness - you may be used to either:

1. DevTools with custom viewport sizes
2. Or some extension e.g. Window Resizer
3. Or resize the browser window itself

The problem with above approaches is you would be testing with fixed window sizes.

The solution

Enter css property resize

The property accepts 4 different values:

• both - resized both horizontally and vertically
• horizontal - resize it in the horizontal direction
• vertical - resize it in the *vertical direction
• none - no user-controllable method for resizing it.

The rules to use resize:

1. NO inline elements
2. overflow is NOT visible

Say you have code that has items wrapped in a flex container:

  <ul class="items">
    <li> item </li>
    <li> lorem ipsum dorem </li>
    <li> Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet </li>
    <li> consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididun </li>
  </ul>

.items {
  display: flex;
  flex-flow: row wrap;
  justify-content: space-evenly;
}

li {
  border: 1px solid;
  padding: 10px;
}

To use resize, you'll wrap the ul with style as:

.container {
  display: block;
  overflow: auto;
  resize: both;
}

<div class="container">
  <li> item </li>
    <li> lorem ipsum dorem </li>
    <li> Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet </li>
    <li> consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididun </li>
</ul>

With this, you can test the responsiveness easily:

Codepen for a demo is available here

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