Suzanne — Sun, 13 Jul 2003 17:47:13 +0000

Actually, columns cause problems because of the "back to top" link taking them back to the top of the page, not to the next column in the article.

The best width for reading is (help me, Megan, I can't remember the details) about 65 characters per line, which is only going to happen for two columns if the browser is set to a very high resolution.

If you have a predominantly older population, it would be better to have one column, not two, and break up the column with appropriate headings/sections and make sure the text is a reasonable original size and can be resized. Resized text in a two-column situation is going to cause you grief, or more particularly, the users grief, since you have larger text in a smaller space and that means fewer words per line.

The issue really is readability -- comprehension -- not legibility. You would do best to have the articles in one column, and if need be break it amongst pages, not into multiple columns.

Volterra — Sun, 13 Jul 2003 01:56:25 +0000

How hard is it to click a "back to top" button/link?

Also, isn't easier for web readers when the column, be it single or double is narrower than an offline document, more like the number of characters on a book page's line?

I have since used a two column table and manually adjusted the content in each - it looks okay.

The go between with my client has suggested using two columns for readability purposes, as the client is a shire with a predominantly older population.

Has the standards dude got anything to say on this?

Thanks for your time

Suzanne — Sat, 12 Jul 2003 18:54:46 +0000

Plus it's really hard to read a web page that you have to scroll up and down to read stuff on. ESPECIALLY when it's an article where the words are supposed to be continuous.

There is a provision for columns in CSS, but it is intended for print, and I'm not sure of the support as yet.

ROB — Sat, 12 Jul 2003 15:23:55 +0000

The problem though is that with variable width fonts they'll never be perfect if you're just counting characters. and even with fixed-width fonts the word wrap screws things up. this is probably why you never see column formatted webpages....

Volterra — Sat, 12 Jul 2003 02:54:55 +0000

Thanks Busy,

I thought as not. I want my client to be able to update their pages easily, and yet retain two columns. Not sure how they're going to go entering text into two divs and have them equal height.

Cheers,

Steve

Busy — Sat, 12 Jul 2003 01:15:24 +0000

do you mean split it automaticaly? if so, answers no,
use server side (ASP, PHP ...) or even javascript to count the length then if over so many display remaining in second div