Question

Limiting width of a table cell regardless of text content

Asked by: stefanlennerbrant

I'd like to display some text in a one-row-only table cell, not overflowing the containing text outside of the cell (or expanding the cell)
However, the cell itself "doesn't know its own width". And I don't know anything at all about the text that shall be displayed.

Today, I'm using something like the html below.
The "nowrap" together with the "overflow:hidden" makes the text display on one single row.
I don't know the size of the image to the right of the text, so I cannot say how wide the cell itself will be.
However, I know that the whole table shall be 500px wide. Thus, the image cell shall be "as small as possible" (just containing the image) and the text cell shall cover the rest of the table width (500px minus the image width)

If I change the span to <span style="overflow:hidden; width:350;"> -- then all is perfect. But I don't know what the proper width shall be here, as it depends on the (unknown) image.
And if I don't use a "width:xxx" then the cell will be expanded to contain all the text (on one row). Not good!


I've also tried to remove the "nowrap" and use a <span style="height:1.2em; overflow:hidden; word-wrap:break-word;">
Then the cell never expands, but instead my text will be cut off at a word break -- thus, the "last word" will not display at all, even though several characters should have fitted in the cell (I thought that "break-word" would do the trick, but obviously it doesn't)
Also, this method does not at all work with at least some non-IE browsers (like Firefox).


<table width=500 border=1 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0><tr valign=top><td>
This is how wide the page should be (contained in the table below)
</td></tr></table>
<br>
<table width=500 style="width:500;" border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0><tr valign=top><td>
  <table border=1 width="100%" border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0>
  <tr valign=top>
    <td>
      <table border=1 border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0>
      <tr valign=top>
        <td nowrap>
            <span style="overflow:hidden;">
              Testing_long_words 1 testing_long_words 2 testing_long_words 3 testing_long_words 4 testing_long_words 5
            </span>
        </td>
      </tr>
      </table>
    </td>
    <td width="1%" align=right>
      <img src="/somepicture.gif" border=0>
    </td>
  </tr>
  </table>
</td></tr></table>

Any ideas?

/Stefan Lennerbrant

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Asked On
2008-12-13 at 15:36:09ID23982706
Tags

html break-word cell

Topics

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)

,

Internet Explorer Web Browser

,

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
6

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Answers

 

by: GreenGhostPosted on 2008-12-13 at 16:02:52ID: 23166020

The widths that you specify on table cells are minimum widths, so specifying 1% will not make the cell smaller. You have to specify a width on the other cell to make that wider.

The correct width of the element containing the text would be "100%" or "auto". You should however use a block element (e.g. div) instead of an inline element (span). A div has the default width set to "auto", so you don't have to specify that.

<table width=500 border=1 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0><tr valign=top><td>
This is how wide the page should be (contained in the table below)
</td></tr></table>
<br>
<table width=500 style="width:500;" border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0><tr valign=top><td>
  <table border=1 width="100%" border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0>
  <tr valign=top>
    <td width="100%">
      <table border=1 border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0>
      <tr valign=top>
        <td nowrap>
            <div style="overflow:hidden;">
              Testing_long_words 1 testing_long_words 2 testing_long_words 3 testing_long_words 4 testing_long_words 5
            </div>
        </td>
      </tr>
      </table>
    </td>
    <td>
      <img src="/somepicture.gif" border=0>
    </td>
  </tr>
  </table>
</td></tr></table>

                                              
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by: stefanlennerbrantPosted on 2008-12-13 at 16:37:33ID: 23166079

Using a "style width" in the table, instead of just
Using a div instead of a span doesn't change anything (I tried that). However it may be more "correct", by definition.

Using "100%" in the <td> doesn't change anything (I tried that as well). You just set the minimum width with it -- if the text doesn't fit in the cell, the cell will just expand (and 100% still means "all of the cell")

Also, using "1%" in the image is just a way to handle situations where the image is very small (I don't remember why, but at some point it had a meaning:-) Using "1%" makes the cell always be exactly as large as the image.
Removing the 1% (and also removing the align=right) will make the image not display aligned to the right, if the text is short.

Thus, the change in html (div instead of span, td 100%, remove img 1%) doesn't make any difference at all.
Did you try it in some browser? Did you see any difference in your html and mine?
At least, it exactly the same in my IE7? What browser do you use, to see any difference?

 

by: AlbertVanHalenPosted on 2008-12-14 at 05:24:23ID: 23167599

You could set the table-layout style on the table and set it to fixed.
Additionaly you have to specify the widths of the table cells.

 

by: GreenGhostPosted on 2008-12-14 at 06:52:50ID: 23167804

No, I didn't try the code in any browser. Setting the width of one cell to 100% will make it take up as much of the table as possible, however that is not the problem. The problem is that the table is expanding beyond the width that you specified because of the contents of the cell. I don't think that is possible to solve without specifying an exact width for the cell.

Using tables for layout has always been problematic. Once it was the only alternative for layout, and it was a revolusion for web design, but that is about ten years ago. The technology has moved on. Using css for layout is much more powerful, and you can easily accomplish things that are not even possible using tables.

This code is tested in Firefox 3, Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, Opera 9 and Chrome.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<style type="text/css">
 
.Header { width: 500px; background: #eee; margin-bottom: 10px; }
 
.Items { width: 500px; }
.Items .item { clear: both; }
.Items .item img { float: right; }
.Items .item div { overflow: hidden; white-space: nowrap; height: 1.4em; }
 
</style>
</head>
<body>
 
<div class="Header">
	This is how wide the page should be (contained in the table below)
</div>
 
<div class="Items">
	<div class="item">
		<img src="/somepicture.gif" />
		<div>
			Testing_long_words 1 testing_long_words 2 testing_long_words 3 testing_long_words 4 testing_long_words 5
		</div>
	</div>
	<div class="item">
		<img src="/somepicture.gif" />
		<div>
			Testing_long_words 1 testing_long_words 2 testing_long_words 3 testing_long_words 4 testing_long_words 5
		</div>
	</div>
	<div class="item">
		<img src="/somepicture.gif" />
		<div>
			Testing_long_words 1 testing_long_words 2 testing_long_words 3 testing_long_words 4 testing_long_words 5
		</div>
	</div>
</div>
 
</body>
</html>
                                              
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by: GreenGhostPosted on 2009-02-01 at 17:48:16ID: 23523982

Checking back to see if you had any progress implementing this?

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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