Flex / Grid layouts not working on button or fieldset elements

The Problem

In some browsers the <button> element doesn't accept changes to its display value, beyond switching between block and inline-block. This means that a <button> element cannot be a flex or grid container, or a <table>, either.

In addition to <button> elements, you may find this constraint applying to <fieldset> and <legend> elements, as well.

See the bug reports below for more details.

Note: Although they cannot be flex containers, <button> elements can be flex items.

The Solution

There is a simple and easy cross-browser workaround to this problem:

Wrap the content of the button in a span, and make the span the flex container.

Adjusted HTML (wrapped button content in a span)

<div>
    <button>
        <span><!-- using a div also works but is not valid HTML -->
            <span>Test</span>
            <span>Test</span>
        </span>
    </button>
    <p>
        <span>Test</span>
        <span>Test</span>
    </p>
</div>

Adjusted CSS (targeted span)

button > span, p {
    display: flex;
    flex-direction: row;
    justify-content: center;
}

Revised Demo

References / Bug Reports

Flexbox on a <button> blockifies the contents but doesn't establish a flex formatting context

User (Oriol Brufau): The children of the are blockified, as dictates the flexbox spec. However, the seems to establish a block formatting context instead of a flex one. User (Daniel Holbert): That is effectively what the HTML spec requires. Several HTML container-elements are "special" and effectively ignore their CSS display value in Gecko [aside from whether it's inline-level vs. block-level]. is one of these.

&

are as well.

Add support for display:flex/grid and columnset layout inside <button> elements

User (Daniel Holbert):

is not implementable (by browsers) in pure CSS, so they are a bit of a black box, from the perspective of CSS. This means that they don't necessarily react in the same way that e.g. a

would. This isn't specific to flexbox -- e.g. we don't render scrollbars if you put overflow:scroll on a button, and we don't render it as a table if you put display:table on it. Stepping back even further, this isn't specific to

. Consider

and which also have special rendering behavior. And old-timey HTML elements like and and

simply do not support custom display values, other than for the purposes of answering the very high-level question of "is this element block-level or inline-level", for flowing other content around the element.

Also see:

Flexbug #9: Some HTML elements can't be flex containers

10. Some HTML elements can't be grid containers

---

I get why it might not work for <button>s, but why on earth is it not working for <fieldset> either? Shouldn't that element be considered a regular block level element that is valid for a flex container?

@fritzmg. Agreed. The rule probably pre-exists CSS3 technologies, such as Flex and Grid, and should be re-evaluated.

So we would like to prevent a button from being misused... but could still misuse something else and place it inside of the button. Sounds about as logic as the rest of the web...

@Michael_B Consider adding a reference to the actual text where you make the assertion. No need to reply to my comment - if you add it to the text where you make the assertion I'll give you an upvote.

A div can't be a child of a button because, if you think of it in old-school HTML, a block-level element can't be a child of an inline-level element. But today, with HTML5, the technically correct answer is that a button element can only accept Phrasing Content. A span represents Phrasing Content, but a div does not. A div represents Flow Content. More details

I

Igari Takeharu

Here is my simplest hack.

button::before,
button::after {
    content: '';
    flex: 1 0 auto;
}

---

Doesn't work for me. How would you fix this: codepen.io/nuthinking/pen/…

d

dippas

Starting Chrome 83, the button now works as inline-grid/grid/inline-flex/flex, you can see more about this new feature here

Here is a snippet(for those using Chrome 83 and up)

button { display: inline-flex; height: 2rem; align-items: flex-end; width: 4rem; -webkit-appearance: none; justify-content: flex-end; } Hi

---

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