Re: [css3-multicol] column overflow

I like the idea.  I think it's a much better solution than spilling  
out horizontally.  Make sure to account for block direction and inline- 
progression-direction when specifying where the extra columns get  
placed.

dave
(hyatt@apple.com)

On Oct 16, 2008, at 2:21 PM, Håkon Wium Lie wrote:

> CSS3-multicol describes how to lay out content into multiple columns
> [1]. The benefit on multicol layouts in paged media is clear.
> Continuous presentations -- in browsers with scrollbars -- provide
> some challenges. For example, when columns are longer that the
> viewport, users will find themselves scrolling up and down repeatedly
> to read the content. One way to address this problem is to set the
> 'max-height' (for horizontal writing systems) of an element so that it
> will fit most people's viewport.
>
> However, adding constraints on the height will lead to content
> overflow. The spec doesn't say exactly what should happen in these
> cases, but the examples suggest that more columns should be added on
> the side. This is also what the two current browser implementations
> (Mozilla and WebKit) do.
>
> This behavior leads to horizontal scrolling, which is arguably worse
> than repeated vertical scrolling. Jacob Nielsen, at least, argues that
> horizontal scrolling should be avoided [2].
>
> One alternative method that has been suggested (most recently by David
> Storey) is to place the overflow content underneath the first set. One
> can think of this as cloning the original multicol element as many
> times as necessary and stacking them on top of each other.
> Margin/padding/border set on the original multicol elements will also
> be honored for the cloned elements.
>
> So, for a three-column layout with overflow and constrained height you
> would get:
>
>   This is some  to test multi-  This sentence
>   sample text   column layout.  continues in
>
>   the next col-
>   umn.
>
> instead of
>
>   This is some  to test multi-  This sentence  the next col-
>   sample text   column layout.  continues in   umn.
>
> (monospaced text is assumed in this example)
>
> Personally, I think this is more friendly to users. Pioneer
> implementors will have to change their code to make this work. AFAIK,
> support for multi-column layout hasn't been turned on official yet one
> still has to use prefixed property names to enable it. So, there's
> still time to fix it if we agree that it's a better solution.
>
> What do people think?
>
> [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-multicol/#overflow
> [2] http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20050711.html
>
> -h&kon
>              Håkon Wium Lie                          CTO °þe®ª
> howcome@opera.com                  http://people.opera.com/howcome

Received on Thursday, 16 October 2008 19:29:30 UTC