HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide, 6th Edition

Multicolumn Layout

Multicolumn text formatting is one of the most common features of desktop publishing. In addition to creating attractive pages in a variety of formats, multiple columns let you present your text using shorter, easier-to-read lines. HTML page designers have longed for the ability to easily create multiple text columns in a single page, but they have been forced to use various tricks, such as multicolumn tables (see Chapter 17).

Netscape 4 neatly solved this problem with the unique <multicol> tag. While fancy unbalanced columns and straddling are not possible with this tag, as they are with tables, conventionally balanced text columns are easy to create with <multicol>. And while this capability is available only with Netscape 4, the <multicol> tag degrades nicely in other browsers.

The <multicol> Tag (Antiquated)

The <multicol> tag creates multiple columns of text and lets you control the size and number of columns.

<multicol> (Antiquated)

Function	Formats text with multiple columns
Attributes	class, cols, gutter, style, width
End tag	</multicol>; never omitted
Contains	body_content
Used in	block

The <multicol> tag can contain any other HTML content, much like the <div> tag. All of the content within the <multicol> tag is displayed just like conventional content, except that Netscape 4 places the contents into multiple columns rather than just one.

The <multicol> tag creates a break in the text flow and inserts a blank line before rendering its content into ...