Archives for January 2012

Creating a multiple column pages is so much easier now with HTML5 and CSS3 than was previously possible. Consider if you have a page with 200 unordered lists. The HTML markup for this would be something similar to this:

Unordered List

<ul>
<li>1</li>
<li>2</li>
and so on….
<li>200</li>
</ul>

As you’ve noticed, I’ve abbreviated the markup. The page rendered will be long. It will take some scrolling down to get to the bottom of the page. The obvious solution for this page layout is to display the data in multiple columns.

Displaying two to three columns is ideal. You can add more if you like. It really depends on how you want to layout your page. How do we add multiple columns on our pages? It’s quite easy. You’ll be surprised how simple it is.

First, let’s add a class div to our markup. In this example, we will call our div “data.” Our markup will now look like the example below. It’s relatively unchanged, except for the div we’ve just added.

HTML5 Markup

<div class=”data”>
<ul>
<li>1</li>
<li>2</li>
and so on….
<li>200</li>
</ul>
</div>

CSS3 Markup

The magic is really in CSS. It’s ideal to place a width in your class div, unless your class div is already inside another div that already has a width limit. We can then set a limit how wide we want our columns widths and column gaps.

I’m using a div with a width of 500px because it goes well with the 150px columns widths and 25px column gaps. You probably already guessed, the column widths are how wide the columns are, and the gaps are the spaces between column widths.

.data {
  width:500px;
  -moz-column-width:150px;
  -webkit-column-width:150px ;
  -moz-column-gap: 25px;
  -webkit-column-gap: 25px;
}

Give It A Try

Give it a try. Adding multiple columns in HTML5 and CSS3 is much easier than was previously thought. Create a simple page with some sample data. Add a class div and use the CSS3 multiple column styles to it.

Compatibility

The code has been tested with Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Apple’s Safari. I haven’t tested it with any Internet Explorer. I’ll be curious if it works with IE 7, 8 or 9.

Here’s a demo of a page using the multiple columns.