What's the Difference Between CSS `align-items` and `align-content` in Flexbox?

Distinguishing align-content and align-items: A Comprehensive Guide

Align-content and align-items, two pivotal CSS flexbox properties, often raise questions regarding their functional differences. This article delves into the distinctions between these properties, providing a clear understanding of their respective roles in flexbox layout.

align-items: Aligning Items Within Flex Containers

The align-items property, as its name suggests, focuses on aligning individual items within a flex container along its cross-axis. This cross-axis is perpendicular to the main axis, which defaults horizontally for the row direction and vertically for the column direction. align-items allows for precise control over the vertical alignment of items within a flexbox row or horizontal alignment in a column flexbox.

align-content: Aligning Multi-Line Flex Containers

Unlike align-items, which targets individual items, align-content operates specifically on multi-line flex containers. It controls the alignment of the entire flex container as a whole, rather than the elements within it. align-content enables you to distribute lines horizontally or vertically, offering options such as space-around, space-between, and stretch to align the container's content.

Visualizing the Impact of align-items and align-content

To illustrate the differences further, consider the following scenarios:

• align-items: When set to center, align-items centers the items vertically within individual flexbox rows.
• align-content: In contrast, align-content: space-around distributes the lines of a multi-line flex container, resulting in equal spacing between the lines. When combined with align-items: center, the container's content aligns vertically centered within each line.

Interactive Exploration with CodePen

Harness the power of CodePen to experiment with these properties and get a hands-on understanding of their impact.

• [CodePen: CSS Flexbox Examples - align-items and align-content](http://codepen.io/asim-coder/pen/MKQWbb)
• [CodePen: Flexbox Tricks - align-content and align-items](http://codepen.io/asim-coder/pen/WrMNWR)

Conclusion

align-items and align-content, despite sharing the common goal of aligning elements in flexbox, serve distinct roles. align-items focuses on aligning individual items within a container, while align-content manages the alignment of the entire container and its lines.

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