Rachel Andrew, What Happens When You Create A Flexbox Flex Container?
Flexbox is quite a complex function to arrange content on a page, but it gives you a lot of freedom. More than just layout, which is more often done with a Grid, it focuses on alignment. When you use display: flex to your CSS, you have the option to arrange your elements horizontally or vertically. The default direction is row, but you have the option of changing it to columns. You can also change whether you want these elements “reflected” from right to left, or bottom to top, or vice versa. It’s important to note that unlike Grids, these layouts are one dimensional. It is also important to take into account the language used when setting up a Flex container, since in other languages like Arabic, the actions would be opposite. The Flex container will adapt to the amount of content. All items will be aligned in a single row, using the size of the container as their size on the main axis. To have more control over the items one can also use flex-grow, flex-shrink and flex-basis, which alters the elements more within the available space.

Overall, a Flexbox is a property which will facilitate organizing content on a page, being highly content aware, whether it is images or text. In a way, the content goes first, and the layout after. Like the author says: “Flex layouts are flexible: they try to make good choices by default about your content.” Instead of creating a layout that you have in mind, it facilitates organizing the elements that you have without having to alter them. The elements will move freely, but within specific rules. With its flexible formatting, it makes sense that this property is effective for when you want to make a page suitable for different screen sizes.


Lyza Danger Gardner, What We Mean When We Say “responsive”
The author discusses the unclearness and variability around the word “responsive” or “responsiveness.” She discusses what makes something, like a website, responsive or not. She first differences the adjective “responsive” from Responsive Web Design. While the latter is very technical, referring to a site’s adaptability using fluid layouts, flexible images, and media queries, “responsive” with a lower cap “r” is a lot more ambiguous and free: “I can tell you how to do Responsive Web Design. How we make things “responsive” is up to us. All of us.” Going back to the definition of the world, considering the development and how rapidly language evolves, she notes that controlling the definition is pointless. Nevertheless, and avoiding pedantry, she goes for what the word means collectively; the core of it. She argues that if many people use “responsive” to imply certain qualities like adaptive, accessible, or device-appropriate, it is for a reason that shouldn't be ignored, and might be connected to how involved people are today to the web. Although, she wonders how this might be changing: “Its meaning already seems to be drifting a bit toward describing a site or app, versus providing a strict recipe for building one.”

Even though I understand and appreciate the author’s discussion around the word “responsive,” I believe she’s writing this article from a very biased point of view, considering how involved she is in the world of web design (and she probably knows it). When I first hear the word responsive, I don’t necessarily associate it to web design. I believe response is a reaction to some external action, whether this applies to science, human interactions, the brain, design, or technology. When it comes to the web, I believe that everything has to have some level of responsiveness, because it requires interaction in order to work. She cites a research that says only 12% of existing websites are responsive. But considering the specificity and possibilities of Web Design, it probably refers to a very specific type of responsiveness, which might ignore things as simple as scrolling down or clicking on a link that I, from a beginner's perspective, consider responsive.