Longer-than-page multi-column layout without even a anchor link back to the top under the first column AND almost invisible link styling - why does this designer hate his readers so much?
You can make multi-columns look good if you make sure to place all the content above the fold. I made an experimental Readability hack which did this and expanded the page horiztonally with a bunch of javascript intercepting navigation - hooking into stuff like mouse scrolls across platforms is a nightmare.
It might have worked better if the columns were more segmented so that you didn’t have to scroll down and up and then down again. That way you could get more content for less scrolling and maintain comfortable line length.
They may work, but you have to keep all of your content above the fold and paginate the article. Comments can be implemented as sidenotes and can point to specific parts of the article.
What I meant is that nearly all internet articles are optimised so that I only need to scroll down. Scrolling up only is necessary if I need to reference something that I already read.
Both your case and a single-column layout fulfill that need. The linked article does not.
