I use flexbox a lot when I’m laying out smaller pieces of a website, like a button with an icon, or a ‘card’ with an image and some text and a button. It’s way easier than trying to float things or use tiny columns.
I like columns when I want 4 columns to break into two rows of two. I know flexbox can do this, but I just like how the columns take care of it for me.
Re: IE - I’ve found that the most reliable way to fix anything that breaks in flex is to keep an eye on the flex property. If something is breaking on IE, I check that first. GitHub - philipwalton/flexbugs: A community-curated list of flexbox issues and cross-browser workarounds for them. This means occasionally manually setting what’s already the default for the flex value, basically making the grey values blue.