Re: [css3-multicol] overflow and paging?

On 12 Oct 2010, at 01:04, Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:

>>>
>>>
>>> Okay, yes, this sort of thing has been brought up before, and will
>>> likely be solved in a manner similar to what you're suggested - a
>>> "paged" overflow method that flows excess content into another pane
>>> which is accessible somehow.
>>
>>
>> I did not suggest that.  There is no need to put the overflowed  
>> content
>> into another pane, because my pane has scrolling (overflow:auto).   
>> I can
>> see all the content by scrolling, that is not the problem.
>>
>> The problem I want solved is much simpler, fundamental, and thus I  
>> expect
>> more prevalent.
>>
>> The problem is the content is in the wrong order.  The columns  
>> should be
>> formatted as if there is a page size _______WITHIN________ the pane  
>> equal
>> to the height of the pane.  Please look again at my diagrams above  
>> and see
>> that I want the order of the content to be correct.
>
> No, I understood you correctly this time.  Given the current rules,
> the content is *not* out of order; it correctly flows down to the
> bottom of the element, then starts again at the top of the next
> column.  There are a few ways to fix this - one way is to invoke a
> "paged" overflow, as I stated in my previous email.  Another is to
> provide a switch to multicol telling it that if you have more columns
> than will fit, to overflow them underneath the existing content,
> rather than to the right.  Is this second one more to your liking?  We
> discussed this in our most recent face-to-face meeting, but didn't
> produce anything from it.  I personally support such a mode switch,
> though.
>
> ~TJ

This is something I'd love. It'd make multi-col much more useful in  
non-print settings, and allows you to avoid issues where if columns  
overflow to the right, your navigation, advertising or whatever get  
pushed off the side of the screen. I guess there would need to be  
another property to set the row-gap (or whatever it should be called)  
to specify the gaps between the rows of columns, or could this just be  
done with regular margin-top and margin-bottom (I suppose you could  
want different gap between rows that you will at the very top and very  
bottom of the element. There could be a use for a row-rule as well,  
although I'm not sure how much that would be useful.

I made a quick faked  mock-up a while ago (which is only working in  
Safari as I just cut off the first section element and put the rest  
into a second section element, and the text is flowing different in  
FF, and Opera doesn't have a public build yet) of how I'd like it to  
work visually.)

http://people.opera.com/dstorey/multi-column-suggestion.html

I'm not sure how text overflow should work. If you should get an  
ellipsis at the end of the last column in a row and another at the  
start of the text in the next row to show it continues, or if you  
should be able to generate content to say something like "Article  
continues below"



>

-- 
David Storey

Chief Web Opener / Product Manager, Opera Dragonfly
W3C WG:  Mobile Web Best Practices / SVG Interest Group

Opera Software ASA, Oslo, Norway
Mobile: +47 94 22 02 32 / E-Mail/XMPP: dstorey@opera.com / Twitter:  
dstorey

Received on Monday, 11 October 2010 23:22:44 UTC