The MULTICOL Tag
dead tags 1996 deadNewspaper columns, fifteen years before CSS could do them.
In 2026: Dead everywhere. It was a Netscape extension that shipped in 3.0 and was gone by 6.0. CSS column-count does the same job now and is in every browser.
Where it came from: Netscape Navigator 3.0 HTML extensions, 1996. MDN ↗
<multicol cols="3" gutter="20" width="600">
<p>Long article text flows into three columns automatically. This was the
only way to do it without slicing your copy into table cells by hand.</p>
</multicol>
<!-- The 2026 version -->
<div style="column-count: 3; column-gap: 20px">
<p>Same thing, in every browser.</p>
</div>