CSS flexbox not working in IE10 - css

Question

In IE10, this code isn't working correctly:
.flexbox form {
display: -webkit-flex;
display: -moz-flex;
display: -ms-flex;
display: -o-flex;
display: flex;
-webkit-flex-direction: row;
-moz-flex-direction: row;
-ms-flex-direction: row;
-o-flex-direction: row;
flex-direction: row;
}
.flexbox form input[type=submit] {
width: 31px;
}
.flexbox form input[type=text] {
width: auto;
display: -webkit-flex;
display: -moz-flex;
display: -ms-flex;
display: -o-flex;
display: flex;
-webkit-flex: auto 1;
-moz-flex: auto 1;
-ms-flex: auto 1;
-o-flex: auto 1;
flex: auto 1;
}
What should happen is that input[type=submit] should be 31px wide, with input[type=text] taking up the rest of the available space within form. What happens is input[type=text] just defaults to 263px for some reason.
This works fine in Chrome and Firefox.

Answer 1

Flex layout modes are not (fully) natively supported in IE yet. IE10 implements the "tween" version of the spec which is not fully recent, but still works.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/CSS/Flexible_boxes
This CSS-Tricks article has some advice on cross-browser use of flexbox (including IE):
http://css-tricks.com/using-flexbox/
edit: after a bit more research, IE10 flexbox layout mode implemented current to the March 2012 W3C draft spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/2012/WD-css3-flexbox-20120322/
The most current draft is a year or so more recent: http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css-flexbox/

Answer 2

As Ennui mentioned, IE 10 supports the -ms prefixed version of Flexbox (IE 11 supports it unprefixed). The errors I can see in your code are:
You should have display: -ms-flexbox instead of display: -ms-flex
I think you should specify all 3 flex values, like flex: 0 1 auto to avoid ambiguity
So the final updated code is...
.flexbox form {
display: -webkit-flex;
display: -moz-flex;
display: -ms-flexbox;
display: -o-flex;
display: flex;
/* Direction defaults to 'row', so not really necessary to specify */
-webkit-flex-direction: row;
-moz-flex-direction: row;
-ms-flex-direction: row;
-o-flex-direction: row;
flex-direction: row;
}
.flexbox form input[type=submit] {
width: 31px;
}
.flexbox form input[type=text] {
width: auto;
/* Flex should have 3 values which is shorthand for
<flex-grow> <flex-shrink> <flex-basis> */
-webkit-flex: 1 1 auto;
-moz-flex: 1 1 auto;
-ms-flex: 1 1 auto;
-o-flex: 1 1 auto;
flex: 1 1 auto;
/* I don't think you need 'display: flex' on child elements * /
display: -webkit-flex;
display: -moz-flex;
display: -ms-flex;
display: -o-flex;
display: flex;
/**/
}

Answer 3

IE10 has uses the old syntax. So:
display: -ms-flexbox; /* will work on IE10 */
display: flex; /* is new syntax, will not work on IE10 */
see css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to-flexbox:
(tweener) means an odd unofficial syntax from [2012] (e.g. display: flexbox;)