# Splitting text into columns

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/splitting-text-into-columns/90080>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [March 25, 2007, 9:44pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/splitting-text-into-columns/90080 "2007-03-25T21:44:08Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Sebastian\_Probst\_E](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/90db22/32.png) [@Sebastian\_Probst\_E](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Sebastian_Probst_E)\
**Post date:** [March 25, 2007, 9:44pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/splitting-text-into-columns/90080/1 "2007-03-25T21:44:08Z")

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As far as I know there is no easy way to split a text block into  
multiple columns on a webpage. Is there any sort of Ruby plugin that  
has this functionality? So you can specify the size of a column and  
have the plugin calculate how much text fits into each column based on  
text sizes etc?

Best regards  
Sebastian

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**Author:** ![Sebastian\_Probst\_E](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/90db22/32.png) [@Sebastian\_Probst\_E](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Sebastian_Probst_E)\
**Post date:** [April 1, 2007, 7:06pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/splitting-text-into-columns/90080/2 "2007-04-01T19:06:10Z")

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I am not sure if this would be of any help in your situation, but  
there is CSS 3 multi column display which is up and coming and Firefox  
has an early implementation (-moz-column-count) that works quite  
well.

See [CSS columns - desktop](http://www.quirksmode.org/css/multicolumn.html)

i use this in an intranet application where i can insist on Firefox as  
the browser of choice.

tonypm

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Sebastian\_Probst\_E](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/90db22/32.png) [@Sebastian\_Probst\_E](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Sebastian_Probst_E)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2007, 8:02am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/splitting-text-into-columns/90080/3 "2007-04-02T08:02:10Z")

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Thanks tonypm.  
Yes, I have heard about the CSS 3 version. I hope it doesn’t take to  
long before it gets widely implemented.

I found a javascript version here in case anybody else needs to  
implement multiple columns before CSS 3:

> **[Introducing the CSS3 Multi-Column Module](https://alistapart.com/article/css3multicolumn/)**
>
> Cédric Savarese would like you to meet the CSS3 multi-column module. It may not have extensive browser support yet, but this semantically sound method of dividing content into columns may be more r…

Best regards  
Sebastian