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> The most important thing that columns preserve is readable line lengths. A single column can give you that. Multiple columns seem to me to be fundamentally
by re 15y ago
> The most important thing that columns preserve is readable line lengths.
A single column can give you that.
Multiple columns seem to me to be fundamentally incompatible with (vertical) scrolling. Yes, they make perfect sense when your pages are fixed-size, and the entire page is visible at once, but when you have a single page of potentially unlimited height, where do you break one column and go on to the next?
- macrael 15y agoI believe scrolling is not ideal. You van break your text on viewport-height and then put as many columns on the screen as possible. This drastically reduces the amount of scrolling required.
- Groxx 15y agoI kinda like that. Paginated, multi-column scrolling that approximates a newspaper (or maybe better).
- Robin_Message 15y agoOnce you do that, why not scroll horizontally? That gives better context and allows for non-page height scrolling better.
- macrael 15y agoI've tried that but it comes out feeling kind of weird. Also, most people don't have a pointing device that allows for horizontal scrolling. But it is totally workable.
- muxxa 15y agoA possible solution implementable by a client: Have the second column be position: fixed; until you scroll to the end of the 1st column - only then start scrolling the 2nd column (and so on to the 3rd column). I find multiple columns in pdfs very annoying to read as you have to scroll down to the bottom of the page, then back up to start the 2nd column, then scroll down to reach the end of the 2nd column.