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Archive dated September 26, 2005
CSS Multi-Column Module in the spotlight
Multi-Columns, guaranteed to prick the ears of designers wanting 100% column layouts, but will it do what you think it will?
The CSS3 MultiColumn Module has been garnering some interest lately and has been featured recently on A List Apart.
Robin_reala summarised in this thread on WMW citing the IHT as an example of how it might be used. The IHT uses a sophisticated Javascript to achieve their effect but it's making folks realise it can be done, and with CSS it could be a distinct possibility.
Mozilla Developers have built in support for some of the CSS3 Multi-Column properties into 1.5b, which means we can start to test and play.
Quirks Mode has some test pages already and offers a way to use the -moz- properties along with the real ones to make sites future compatible.
Also you might like to try this "plug'n'play" javascript by Cédric Savarese, as a usable option meantime. It's built so you can upload it and use the correct properties, although they're limited at the minute to:
- column-count
- column-width
- column-gap
- column-rule
Personally on IHT I don't like the fact the next page button means your eye has to move back to the left of the page, I'd rather it moved a column at a time (aka, horizontal scroll).
Now that we have a few ways available to play, I wonder if we will start to see more of the upsides/downsides?
Sorry but muses are now closed on this article
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It's too bad I didn't know about any of this when I started up our magazine web site a couple of years back (I've since switched to using WordPress as a content system).
Our print version mimics multi-column newspaper layout (both editors have worked in the newspaper industry) and it was so hard to try to get it to work, especially cross-browser. Would've saved me hours of frustration.
Posted By Jeremy on 06/12/2005 at 23:30pm «þ»