column-count was proposed in January 2001, candidate in December 2009. It’s supported in WebKit and Mozilla via extensions and Opera directly, but it’s not in IE9. Y U no support columns IE9? That’s OK, we can work around this with columnizer:
              
                
                  
                    
                       
if ($.browser.msie && $.browser.version < 10) { // am I a hopeless romantic for assuming that IE10 will support it?
        $('.multicolumn').columnize({
            width: 600,
            columns: 3
        });
    }
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/* Support for Webkit, Mozilla, Opera */
div#multicolumn, .multicolumn {
        -moz-column-count: 3;
        -moz-column-gap: 20px;
        -webkit-column-count: 3;
        -webkit-column-gap: 20px;
        column-count: 3;
        column-gap: 20px;
        width:600px;
}
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n. 1: automatic, but with an element of magic. 2: too complex to understand and/or explain