7
Multiple ColuMns
Although desktop and laptop screens have
gotten wider in recent years, studies still
show that people have difficulty reading
long lines of text. (Roughly 65 to 75 charac-ters per line is generally considered a comfortable
length to read.) This convention has led to restricted
layouts and websites that don’t take advantage of the
opportunities presented by wider screens.
For years, magazines and newspapers have used multiple columns to
flow content—addressing both the issue of long text lines and how to pack
a lot of copy into limited spaces. Now, with the advent of the Multi-column
Layout Module in CSS3 (http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-multicol/), websites can
take advantage of multiple columns, too.
The Multi-column Layout Module currently has Candidate Recom men-
da tion status, meaning the module is considered mostly complete and is
well implemented in IE10+ and other modern browsers (albeit with some
minor caveats), so you have plenty of opportunities to experiment with mul-
tiple columns.
PX3024