Posted by Dr John Stockton on 02/07/06 19:30

JRS: In article <27PFf.48995$7S.18275@tornado.rdc-kc.rr.com>, dated
Mon, 6 Feb 2006 21:23:10 remote, seen in news:comp.lang.javascript,
Nehmo Sergheyev <nehmo54@hotmail.com> posted :
>
>- Toby Inkster
>> Columns of text make sense for newspapers and magazines, where you can
>see
>> the whole page in front of you at once; but what makes sense in print
>> media doesn't always make sense on the web!
>>
>> On the web, if you have columns of text, you need to scroll (arrow
>> buttons, mouse wheel, scroll bar, whatever) all the way to the bottom
>as
>> you read the first column, then right back to the top to start the
>second
>> columns. Silly.
>
>Nehmo -
>To be a litle clearer:

There was no need to be clearer; you explained it perfectly well, but
received a knee-jerk reaction from one who had not considered the rest
of what you wrote.

And you explained that it would be a psychology experiment, which
implies that there is no need to consider existing custom.

> I mean to have the columns feed each other on the
>visible part of the page. The down-scroll would add fresh content to the
>bottom the right column and lose content off the top of the left column.
>The text on the upper right column would scroll over to the bottom of
>the left column.

My screen is wider than it is deep; but my windows are, like most
printed paper, deeper than they are wide. So I can see that, with a
full-screen browser, it would seem good to have columns; and that the
material could usefully scroll as you suggest. It would take getting
used to, since sheets of paper don't scroll (books used to scroll, of
course, millennia ago; but not in parallel columns).

You might consider three columns, with the "current focus" being in the
centre of the middle one, giving the ability to glance ahead/back 1.5
"pages".

I don't know how you'd do a special scroll bar[*], but forward and back
buttons would be easy.

You could certainly use CSS or a Table to provide the 2/3 "page"s, and
compute the text that goes in them at any one time (see FAQ 4.15). The
whole content could I think be supplied in a DIV display:none.


BUT NOTE : I don't want "text" sites to take up more than half the
screen width; I'd resent obligatory or narrow columns.


[*] Try a textarea, one column wide, full of newlines, if javascript can
deduce the thumb position, to get a scrollbar.

--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon.co.uk Turnpike v4.00 IE 4 ©
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