order

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since ⁨September 2015⁩.

The order CSS property sets the order to lay out an item in a flex or grid container. Items in a container are sorted by ascending order value and then by their source code order. Items not given an explicit order value are assigned the default value of 0.

Try it

order: 0;

order: 3;

order: -1;

order: 2;

<section class="default-example" id="default-example">
  <div class="transition-all" id="example-element">Box 1:</div>
  <div style="order: 1">Box 2: <code>order: 1;</code></div>
  <div style="order: 2">Box 3: <code>order: 2;</code></div>
  <div style="order: 2">Box 4: <code>order: 2;</code></div>
  <div style="order: 3">Box 5: <code>order: 3;</code></div>
</section>

.default-example {
  max-height: 300px;
  display: flex;
  flex-flow: column;
}

.default-example > div {
  background-color: rgb(0 0 255 / 0.2);
  border: 3px solid blue;
  margin: 0.5rem;
  padding: 0.5rem;
  flex: 1;
}

#example-element {
  background-color: rgb(255 0 200 / 0.2);
  border: 3px solid rebeccapurple;
}

#example-element::after {
  content: attr(style);
  outline: 2px dashed;
  font-family: monospace;
}

In the above demo, select the options on the left-hand side to change the value of the pink box's order property. The light blue boxes have been given fixed order values.

Bear in mind the effect of source order. For example, when order: 2; is selected, the pink box is placed before the two blue boxes with order: 2;. This is because the pink box appears before the blue boxes in the source code.

Syntax

css

/* <integer> values */
order: 5;
order: -5;

/* Global values */
order: inherit;
order: initial;
order: revert;
order: revert-layer;
order: unset;

Since order is only meant to affect the visual order of elements and not their logical or tab order, it must not be used on non-visual media such as speech.

Defined in the display property is not creating a flex or grid container, it has no effect.

Values

<integer>: Represents the ordinal group to be used by the item.

Accessibility

Using the order property will create a disconnect between the visual presentation of content and DOM order. This will adversely affect low vision users navigating with the aid of assistive technology such as a screen reader. If the visual order differs from the DOM order, your users will have different experiences depending on how they access your content.

Flexbox & the keyboard navigation disconnect via Tink (2016)
Source Order Matters via Adrian Roselli (2015)
Understanding WCAG, Guideline 1.3 explanations
Understanding Success Criterion 1.3.2 | W3C Understanding WCAG 2.0

Formal definition

Animation type	an integer

Formal syntax

order = 
  <integer>

Examples

Ordering items in a flex container

In this example, we create a classic two-sidebar layout.

HTML

We include a header, a footer, and a main content area. The main content includes an article and two side bars. Note their order! We'll use the CSS order property to change their visual order.

html

<header>Header</header>
<main>
  <article>Article</article>
  <nav>Nav</nav>
  <aside>Aside</aside>
</main>
<footer>Footer</footer>

CSS

We style the main area using width, while the flex shorthand.

We then set different order property values on each of the flex container's three children; this means the CSS is defining that component's visual order rather than it appearing in the order declared in the HTML.

css

main {
  display: flex;
  text-align: center;
}
main > article {
  flex: 1;
  order: 2;
}
main > nav {
  width: 200px;
  order: 1;
}
main > aside {
  width: 200px;
  order: 3;
}