> As an old school print designer, I would love to see a return to a web with multi-column text on desktop, that reformatted to single column on mobile, and graphics runarounds much more complicated in shape than what a float can do.
this has been possible for quite some time with CSS columns:
Without sarcasm, that's great. Now what is there to prevent me from scrolling up and down on a 16:9 display to read the left column of a 10k letter text and then the right column?
I see it has "length" and "min/max-content" properties... even if there are sufficiently many <p>aragraphs (for vertical splitting), inevitably enough paragraphs will be single column due short length. So it becomes a mix and match between "here we were able to split into columns, and here you get a full width single column text flow"?
PS: Oh and don't get me on the CSS used to determine mobile layouts. My 9:16 4K often enough triggers that degraded experience of mobile.
> Now what is there to prevent me from scrolling up and down on a 16:9 display to read the left column of a 10k letter text and then the right column?
if the author decided on exactly 2 columns then, well, that's not a limitation of the tech. css columns support dynamic columns, but obviously the author would then need to specify a max height.
> My 9:16 4K often enough triggers that degraded experience of mobile.
again, sounds like incompetent authorship rather than a tech limitation.
this has been possible for quite some time with CSS columns:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/columns
plus media queries for desktop vs mobile layouts:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/CSS_media_q...