How To Produce A 3-column List?

I have to produce a 3-column list of items similar to what can be seen for the different groups (mostly banks and financial institutions) at this page: http://funds.ft.com/FundDire

Solution 1:

CSS3 column styles can be used on a list as well:

<ul class="group-list">
    ...
</ul>

.group-list {
    -moz-column-gap: 20;
    -moz-column-count: 3;
    -webkit-column-count: 3;
    -webkit-column-gap: 20;
    column-count: 3;
    column-gap: 20;
}

You can add Modernizr and this jQuery column plugin to support old versions of IE:

if(!Modernizr.csscolumns) {
        $('.group-list').makeacolumnlists({cols:3, colWidth:240, equalHeight:false, startN:1});
}

PPK has a good article on CSS3 column support in browsers, and caniuse.com has a page on CSS3 Multiple column layout too.

Solution 2:

This is the simplest and most effective answer I've found:

http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=27f87

To quote the site:

The HTML:
<ul>
  <li>Antelope</li>
  <li>Bison</li>
  <li>Camel</li>
  <li>Deer</li>
  <li>Eland</li>
  <li>Gazelle</li>
</ul>

The CSS:
ul {
  float: left;
  width: 12em;
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
  list-style: none;
}

li {
  float: left;
  width: 6em;
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
} 

"If we want more columns we can widen the list and and add more list items"

Solution 3:

This was answered about an hour ago here: How do I overflow the contents of a column into the next column using CSS?

Solution 4:

If it´s an unordered list, you can just float the li's left and give them a width of 33%.