CSS3 Demos - Columns

Columns

Short of some truly unpleasant JavaScript trickery, it's not been possible to dynamically flow text from one place to another with a change of available screenspace. Enter CSS3 Columns, which does exactly that; dynamically balancing columns via one of two possible measures:

Specifying column-count

With this property, you state how many columns are required and the browser divides the available width evenly between them. You should almost always also specify a column-gap value too, to provide a bit of breathing room. The browser is supposed to attempt to keep the column heights as similar as possible:

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Specifying column-width

Alternatively, you can come at columns from the other direction - specifying a width for each column, and allowing the browser to fit as many columns as it can into the space available, again keeping the column heights as similar as possible:

Column rules

For aesthetic purposes, you can also specify a rule to appear between the columns - although this has sharply limited browser support at the moment (see below):