- From: John T. Whelan <whelan@physics.utah.edu>
- Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1998 15:14:19 -0600
- To: www-style@w3.org
- Cc: d.cary@ieee.org
The following suggestion for adding a new presentational element to HTML was posted to www-html. What's the status of CSS for providing this sort of column layout? John T. Whelan whelan@iname.com http://www.slack.net/~whelan/ > Let me see if I can explain what I would like a "newspaper columns" tag to do. > > <html> > <h1 align="center"> > Marsbase Alpha Gazette > </h1> > <newspaper_columns width=300> > <h2>First baby born on Mars</h2> > <p>Blah, blah, blah > ... > <p>Blah, blah, blah > > <h2>Dome 2 under construction</h2> > <img src="artistic_sketch.png" alt="" align="right"> > <p>Blah, blah, blah > ... > <img src="blueprints.web" alt="" align="left"> > <p>Blah, blah, blah > ... > </newspaper_columns> > <h1>Classified Ads</h1> > <newspaper_columns width=200> > <p>jetpack for sale. Hardly used.... > <hr> > <p>Opening for a pilot. Must have 6 months experience on Mars. > ... > <hr> > </newspaper_columns> > </html> > > which might render as > > | Marsbase Alpha Gazette |^ > |First baby born | her name is | Dome 2 under | | > |on Mars | is ... | construction | | > | blah ... | | blah . | height of user screen > | | | | | > | | | | V > +----------------+----------------+----------------+ - > | the dome is | | | > | scheduled to be| | | > | completed by ..| | | > |... | | | > ->| |<- 300 pixels > ... > | Classified Ads | > | jetpack | | | | > | ... | | ---------- | | > | ---------- | | | | > | opening | ---------- | | | > ->| |<- 200 pixels > > > Of course I cannot predict or control the geometry of the user's browser > window. That is the whole point of this "newspaper" tag. If I knew exactly > that geometry, I could do this with a <table></table>. > > If the user resizes his window to less than 2* the specified width, then > the UA renders the newspaper_columns text into a single column, exactly > like the single column one sees at > http://www.builder.com/ > http://www.zdnet.com/ > http://www.cnet.com/ > http://msnbc.com/ > > If the user resizes his window to 2* the specified width or more, then the > UA would render the text into multiple columns on his screen, similar to > using a table. (The wider the screen, the more columns would render). > > Unlike a table, however, each column would never be longer than the height > of the user's screen. (If the user made the window-height shorter, then the > text would reflow -- some words that were at the bottom of the 1st column > now move to the top of the 2nd column, etc.). If one wants to read the > entire story, one just reads each line of text left-to-right (in English), > then each column of text top-to-bottom, then jump to the next column to the > right ... really long stories would require him to scroll down to the next > "page" and start over at the 1st column. But one never needs to scroll down > to read a story, then scroll back up to the top to read the next column of > the story, the way one needs to now if one tries to implement this with > tables but the user has a shorter window than the designer used. [...] > + David Cary "mailto:d.cary@ieee.org" "http://www.ionet.net/~caryd_osu/david" > | Future Tech, Unknowns, PCMCIA, digital hologram, <*> O-
Received on Saturday, 22 August 1998 17:13:58 UTC