https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51260

Michael M. <[email protected]> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
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                 CC|                            |[email protected]

--- Comment #15 from Michael M. <[email protected]> ---
Multiple columns for references causes two major usability issues:

1. When there is only one reference and this reference is longer than the
column width, it is split into several parts, causing gaps inside the
reference. This gets even worse for bidi texts: If you have a reference in a
right-to-left language inside a left-to-right context, and it is split into
multiple columns, you have to start reading on the right end of the left
column, read to the left, jump right to the next column, read to the left
again, etc.

2. When the list of references is longer than the screen and a reference breaks
into two columns, you have to scroll to read it. This means:
a) You click the superscript number, the browser sends you to the upper part of
the reference.
b) You have to scroll down to the beginning of the reference and start reading.
c) You have to scroll up again to the second part and continue reading.
d) If you don't know that you can use your browser's "back" function, you have
to scroll down again to get to the back link.

Both issues could be solved by using "break-inside: avoid-column;", but the
browser support currently is very poor. So unless browser support for this
improves in future or somebody writes a JS solution for it, multi-column
reference lists are a bad idea for usability reasons.

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