Extensions of CSS for horizontal layout / columns

Firstly, sorry about those message that went to both www-html and 
www-style.

Here are the things that I think would allow CSS to be viable as a 
horizontal presentation medium as well as vertical.

The simple extensions:

height: <length> | <percentage> | auto
The <percentage> is added to mirror 'width'

float: left | right | top | bottom | none

clear: none | left | right | top | bottom | all
A particular problem here is that left/right almost have to be 
exclusive with top/bottom, unless we mark sections as below.

columns: <number> | <length>
Unfortunately this would require some sort of extension to 
essentially allow the following properties as well:
column-padding
column-margins
column-border
column-background

keep-with: previous | next | none
Applies To: block-level
This would be applied when a break in a page/column occurs, you could 
keep title with their paragraphs, etc...

keep-together:  all | <number> | <length> | none
Applies to: block-level
Keep-together can be used to make sure that one line of a paragraph 
doesn't appear on a separate page, specify 6 would make sure that at 
least 6 lines appear on each page/column.  All would specify that no 
split can occur inside the element.

A significant extension that I think would prove most valuable, but 
liekly most difficult to implement is:

content-flow: vertical | horizontal

This could be used within a <DIV> section to indicate how content is 
to be placed relative to the previous content.  Vertical is the 
default and the way we do it now:

[Content 1]
[Content 2]
[Content 3]

Horizontal would mean:

[Content 1][Content 2][Content 3]
__
| Mortar: Advanced Web Development <http://bigpic.com/mortar/>
| Neil St.Laurent  neil@bigpic.com
| Big Picture Multimedia

Received on Sunday, 17 August 1997 17:28:22 UTC