I haven’t had much time for web design theory lately, but I have great respect for A List Apart. When I do make time for it, this is one of my must-reads. ALA put an article up on Sep 26th titled Introducing the CSS3 Multi-Column Module. It deals with a proposed solution to the difficulty of flowing text into multiple horizontal columns. Here’s a great picture from the article that explains it very well:
This is all fine and good, but I disagree with the introduction to the article where it states:
While most computer screens are wider than tall, most websites are the exact opposite: longer than wide […] Horizontal space, on the other hand, is quite cheap; we often don’t even know what to do with it.
Wanna konw why I disagree? This totally leaves out small form-factor devices such as PDAs. And I have a perfect example for you. In fact, the PIErony is exquisite. (As in Pocket Internet Explorer.)
Here we have PIE with the “Fit to screen” option disabled:
It doesn’t look all that bad really, however you must scroll left and right to read it, which is HORRIBLE enough on a desktop monitor, but its ten times worse on a 240px wide LCD.
Here the same page with the “fit to screen” option enabled. This is PIE trying its best to fit everything in so that you can read a page without having to scroll sideways. The images are scaled down which helps a lot. Many websites, notably the flexible-layout ones do GREAT with this. Check out ALA:
I scoff at thee, ALA! In case you are curious, here’s a screenshot of my site, not that I wrote the theme myself (it’s a tweaked almost spring). Enjoy:
<angelschanting>
</angelschanting>
Just to show you its not just me:
Amen.
Disclaimer: I think Pocket IE is pretty lame in most respects, simply because its a lowest-common-denominator kind of application. No frills.