Columns of equal widths

An assistant to divide a previously selected text into customizable columns of even widths.

Columns of equal widths refers to those columns of text which show a uniform width along the page. This is the most common way to distribute text in columns. It is sometimes appropriated to distribute in columns some text block to reduce empty space in a page or facilitate reading. This is particularly recommended in the case of lists. This assistant offers two different techniques to split a portion of text into columns of equal widths, even when you do not know the MediaWiki rules for columns. Columns built with this assistant  are not supported by some older browsers, most notably Internet Explorer 9 and below, and Opera 11.0 and below. Columns will be shown only in browsers supporting one of the following CSS3 properties: column-count -moz-column-count (for Mozilla/Gecko-based browsers such as Firefox) -webkit-column-count (for WebKit-based browsers such as Safari and Google Chrome) Both techniques offered by the assistant can bear highly customizable columns, where you can optionally show: ·    A background shade of white (15 different shades) ·    A smaller font size (90%) ·    Rules among columns   Method 1: Fixed columns widths (based on the {{Div col}} template) This method allows to create columns with fixed widths in em units.(1) , which are mostly used for bulleted or numbered lists, but also useful for regular text. This method is based on the template {{Div col}}. If you want to apply columns to a list, first create the list without empty lines among list elements. In this application it is suggested to fix the columns width according to the length of the list elements to leave not too much blank space. Note that the resulting number of columns depends on the width of the window. The wider the browser window the greater number of columns. Method 2: Fixed number of columns (Based on the {{Column-count}} template) This technique fixes exactly the number of columns, so never appear extra columns. You are free to choose the most suitable method to your purpose. Just be aware that if you use this method to list elements of short length, the final result will be unaesthetic, because the columns would unnecessarily appear too much separated. Many articles show columns with this appearance, because editors tend to use the simplest possible sintax and do not consider all the alternatives. Background color This assistant offers the option to assign a shade of white to the background of the columns, to distinguish better the columns from the rest of the page. A background color in columns is not commonly used in Wikipedia, and in such cases the color used is "GhostWhite" (hex:F8F8FF, RGB:248 248 255). The assistant offers a menu with 15 shades of white. If you want to use one shade, remember to check the option <Background color> before clicking on <Apply columns>. Otherwise the background will be white like the rest of the page. The following is a list of the shades of white offered by the assistant:

Shade of white	Hex code	RGB values
WhiteSmoke	F5F5F5	245 245 245
Snow	FFFAFA	255 250 250
Seashell	FFF5EE	255 245 238
Linen	FAF0E6	250 240 230
AntiqueWhite	FAEBD7	250 235 215
OldLace	FDF5E6	253 245 230
FloralWhite	FFFAF0	255 250 240
Ivory	FFFFF0	255 255 240
Beige	F5F5DC	245 245 220
Honeydew	F0FFF0	240 255 240
MintCream	F5FFFA	245 255 250
Azure	F0FFFF	240 255 255
AliceBlue	F0F8FF	240 248 255
GhostWhite	F8F8FF	248 248 255
LavenderBlush	FFF0F5	255 240 245