Posted by Alan J. Flavell on 01/12/06 13:30

On Thu, 12 Jan 2006, David Dorward wrote:

> Jose wrote:
>
> > , and it would be nice if the presentation could be in columns, like a
> > newspaper.

I don't agree. There's a reason that newspapers do what they do - and
it doesn't have any relevance to on-screen displays. Multi-column
presentations might be ok for a print-only stylesheet, but they're
madness for projection or handheld, and, speaking personally, I
heartily dislike them for conventional screen display also.

On the rare occasions that I've made available a browser window that's
uncomfortably wide for lines of text, I'd expect max-width (specified
in em units, of course) to solve that problem for me. Those who
choose to use a browser-like object which omits to implement max-width
must make their own arrangements, as far as I'm concerned - CSS is
meant to be optional, after all.

So no - in a general WWW context, IMO it would *not* be nice if the
presentation was "like a newspaper".

Columnar presentation *can* be useful when the columns are meant to be
read alongside each other, e.g an original text and its translation,
or an original text and a comprehensive commentary on it. But that
then stands to be rated as "tabular data" and presented using table
markup, quite different from the usual situation "like a newspaper".

> A user preference? Certainly. I'd much rather just scroll down. As for
> people who use screen magnification software ...
>
> http://blog.dorward.me.uk/2005/11/15/multicol.html

Count me in on that argument!

cheers

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