Using display inline-block columns move down

Question

I am trying to use display:inline-block to build 3 columns.

It works fine in the beginning, but when I add content to the first column it affects the rest of the layout and renders the rest of the columns at a lower level.

What can I do to avoid this?

.cont {
  width: 500px;
  height: 200px;
  background: #666666;
}
.col {
  display: inline-block;
  width: 30%;
  background: pink;
}

<div class="cont">
  <div class="col">
    test<br><br><br>
  </div>
  <div class="col">
    col2
  </div>
  <div class="col">
    col3
  </div>
</div>

Answer 1

You should add vertical-align: top; CSS declaration to align the columns vertically at the top:

.cont span {
    display: inline-block;
    vertical-align: top;     /* Vertically align the inline-block elements */
    height:100%;
    line-height: 100%;
    width: 33.33%;           /* Just for Demo */
    outline: 1px dashed red; /* Just for Demo */
}

Here is a online demo.

---

Honestly, I'm not a fan of using inline-block to create columns on the page, because of the white spaces between them.

The float was being used for a while, but nowadays flex box or CSS grid can be an option.