Re: [css3-multicol] Nested multicolumn elements rendering

Håkon Wium Lie <howcome@opera.com> writes:

> As for implementations, here's a test document:
>
>   http://people.opera.com/howcome/2013/tests/multicol-fill2.html
>
> The results are:
>
>                   force-balances unconstrained      honors explicit column breaks
>                   columns in continous media        in continous media
>
>   Opera/presto    sometimes(*)                      yes
>   Gecko           no                                no (column breaks not supported
>   Prince          no                                yes
>   AntennaHouse    no                                yes
>   IE              yes                               yes (but only after balancing)
>   
>   (*) in the test document Opera/Presto balances the first div, but
>   not the second. Due to there being an explicit column break?

There are only 2 columns. When there's one explicit break, how can we
balance anything? There's only one column left and no implicit breaks
available to play with. Looks like IE10 fails to realize this and
creates an overflowing column instead. That looks like a bug to me.

> So, in conclusion, it seems we have more implementatations that do not
> force-balance unconstrained columns in continous media.

That depends on how you count. :) Something has happened to the Gecko
implementation recently, but it too used to follow the spec (the CR
still says that we should force-balance under certain circumstances).

height:auto; column-fill:auto; causes force-balancing in BOTH major
*browser* engines (Presto (no jokes about "major", please) and Trident)
that have a complete implementation of multicol. The two other engines,
Gecko (until recently) and WebKit, also cause force-balancing here, but
that's just because they don't support the column-fill property.

Now Gecko has changed, perhaps based on what the ED says. It now
supports column-fill, and it doesn't force-balance, and this is a
violation of the CR (but correct, according to the ED).

That said, the proposed change (never force-balance) does simplify
things. If nobody has anything against it and this doesn't break the
web, I suppose making an backwards-incompatible change to the spec is
fine.

-- 
---- Morten Stenshorne, developer, Opera Software ASA ----
------------------ http://www.opera.com/ -----------------

Received on Monday, 19 August 2013 08:11:05 UTC