Reverse Stack

With responsive HTML emails, you sometimes need to reverse the order in which stacked columns appear on mobile. You might even want to set a custom stacking order for layouts with 3+ columns.

Reverse 2 col

Imagine a two column layout, with text on the left and an image on the right:

<table class="w-full">
  <tr>
    <th class="sm:block w-1/2 sm:w-full px-8 font-sans font-normal text-left">
      <p class="text-2xl font-hairline text-black">Left text</p>
      <p class="text-gray-700">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipisicing elit. Tempore aspernatur.</p>
    </th>
    <th class="sm:block w-1/2 sm:w-full px-8 font-normal text-left">
      <img src="https://picsum.photos/600/600" alt="Unsplash photo">
    </th>
  </tr>
</table>

Naturally, the image will show under the text when viewed on a mobile device.

However, using table responsive display utilities, we can reverse the columns:

<table class="w-full">
  <tr>
    <th class="w-1/2 sm:table-footer-group px-8 font-sans font-normal text-left">
      <div class="sm:w-full sm:px-8">
        <h2 class="text-2xl font-hairline text-black">Left text</h2>
        <p class="text-gray-700 m-0">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipisicing elit. Tempore aspernatur.</p>
      </div>
    </th>
    <th class="w-1/2 sm:table-header-group px-8 font-normal text-left">
      <div class="sm:w-full sm:px-8">
        <img src="https://picsum.photos/600/600" alt="Unsplash photo">
      </div>
    </th>
  </tr>
</table>

It's done in 2 simple steps:

  1. Use the responsive table-{...}-group utilities on each column, to reverse column order on small screens
  2. Wrap the contents of each column in a <div> and use it to set padding for mobile. This is required because the CSS properties used to reverse the column order do not support padding

2 col reorder demo on CodePen

Reorder 3+ cols

In a similar fashion, we can reorder a 3+ column layout:

<table class="w-full">
  <tr class="sm:w-full sm:table">
    <th class="w-1/3 sm:table-footer-group">
      <div class="sm:px-8">
        <h2 class="text-xl font-hairline text-white">Last on mobile</h2>
      </div>
    </th>
    <th class="w-1/3 sm:table-footer-group">
      <div class="sm:px-8">
        <h2 class="text-xl font-hairline text-white">Second on mobile</h2>
      </div>
    </th>
    <th class="w-1/3 sm:table-caption sm:w-full">
      <div class="sm:px-8">
        <h2 class="text-xl font-hairline text-white">First on mobile</h2>
      </div>
    </th>
  </tr>
</table>

Only a couple of extra steps:

  • Make the <tr> full width on mobile, by adding sm-w-full and sm-table
  • Use sm-table-caption and sm-w-full on the column that you want to display first on mobile

3+ col reorder demo on CodePen