Stack

Stacking is a way to control the relationship between elements that are arranged above and below each other on your canvas. Stack automatically puts elements inside a flex container which prevents overlap when the viewport changes size.

Creating a stack

Multi-select elements using Shift on your keyboard, then click Stack. Remember, you can only stack elements that are arranged above and below each other on your canvas.

Image showing a site being worked on in a workspace. The layers panel is open and 3 elements are highlighted.

Vertical margins

In a stack, the elements are separated by vertical margins, indicated by blue strips. To control the size of these margins, open the Inspector panel and under Margins, enter your desired values in px or %.

Note: in a stack, you’re addressing only the Top and Bottom margins between elements.

Image showing website in the workspace. The Inspector panel is open and margins is clicked on.

Reordering elements

You can manually switch the order of stacked elements using drag and drop. The margins will automatically adjust to accommodate the new layout.

Image showing a site design in the workspace. A stack is highlighted in the canvas indicating that you can use drag and drop to reorder.

Attaching & detaching

You’re free to drag elements in and out of a stack.

Note: These actions result in reparenting which changes the hierarchy of your site and affects all breakpoints.

Image showing site design in the workspace, showing attaching and detaching elements in the stack.

Unstacking elements

You can break up a stack to release elements from their flex container. Click anywhere in your stack, select Stack from the blue breadcrumbs and click Unstack. You can also unstack elements using the Layers panel.

Note: These actions result in reparenting which changes the hierarchy of your site and affects all breakpoints.

Image showing website in the workspace and how to unstack elements.

Follow these steps in the editor

Open exercise template →

Attach text to the container. Drag the title text into the container. Now drag the paragraph text underneath it. Use the handles to resize the canvas and watch how the elements overlap on different screen sizes.
Create a stack. Select the title and paragraph text. Click Stack to create a flex container with these elements inside. Resize the canvas. You’ll notice that the vertical margin between the text elements remains the same on every screen size.
Add elements. Drag the button into the stack and place it below the paragraph. Click Attach to Stack. You should see the margins between elements highlighted in light blue.
Reorder a stack. Drag the button and place it above the title text. Resize the canvas to see how it looks on different screen sizes.
Unstack elements. Click anywhere in your stack to open the blue breadcrumbs. Select Stack, then click Unstack. Open the Layers panel to see that the stack has disappeared. Move to desktop, tablet and mobile and see that the change has affected all breakpoints.

Transcript

Let’s take a look at how to use Stack on Editor X.

On a responsive site, elements are free to resize and change position depending on the viewport. Use Stack to keep elements at a set distance from each other across all breakpoints.

This comes in handy with elements like text and buttons, when you want to maintain the vertical margins between them and prevent overlap on smaller screens.

Any elements on your canvas that are arranged in a vertical order can be stacked.

Here’s how it works.

On desktop, we’ve already sized and positioned our title, paragraph, and button.

But as we resize the screen, you can see these elements don’t have any spatial relationship between them yet.

From the Layers panel, notice how the elements are positioned freely within this section.

To create a relationship between these elements, use the Shift key to multi-select them and click Stack. This places them inside a responsive flexbox container that maintains their order.

Inside this new container, the elements now have vertical margins between them, indicated by these blue strips.

To adjust these margins, select an element, and from the Inspector panel, type in your desired value.

Now, when you resize the screen, you can see the 3 elements maintain a clear vertical relationship between each other.

Drag elements to reorder them in your stack. Notice the margins automatically adjust in relation to the new order.

You can always drag elements in and out of your Stack to attach and release them.

To release all elements from the flexbox container, select your stack, then click Unstack, or use the action menu from the Layers panel. Note, these actions change the hierarchy of the site, so they affect all breakpoints. Find out more about hierarchy in the Element Hierarchy and Parenting video in this series.

Editor X is an advanced creation platform. To master it, continue watching this series of video tutorials.