very cool preview of the CSS3 spec

Although CSS3 has not yet become the specification for the web, there is one new development which seems very exciting for the purposes of layout: an attribute selector tentatively called "column-count". This attribute allows the author to format text to flow into a predetermined number of columns of equal height, the way you can do with a desktop publishing program like InDesign or Quark. Mozilla Firefox/Seamonkey is already experimenting with this attribute. Unfortunately it only works in Mozilla browsers as of this writing, though I'm hoping Opera jumps on this too. As I said in another post: who cares what that atavistic browser parody, IE 7, 8, whatever– does with their product.

Anyway, here's a sample Lorem Ipsum example of the column-count attribute set to "3". Take a look at it in a basic text editor; see how basic the markup is. To view the style in action, however, you'll have to be in a recent vintage Mozilla browser.

Anyway, I'm thrilled. But then, I'm easily captivated by shiny objects and other trivial things.

2 Replies to “very cool preview of the CSS3 spec”

  1. If you refer to CSS3 multi-columns, yes that is something we are interested in (and after all our CTO is author for the specification).

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