Restrict <p> to one line and ellipsize when necessary?

Question

I have this:

<ul>
  <li>
    <p>Some long text here</p>
  </li>
</ul>

is there a way to get the p text to be restricted to a single line, and have it ellipsize if it's going to be wider than the parent container?

Thanks

Answer 1

You can restrict the text to one line using CSS.

<p style="white-space: nowrap;"></p>

EDIT: According to quirksmode there's apparently a text-overflow: ellipsis. I've never used this and don't really know anything about it, but you should look into it.

Answer 2

CSS has white-space: nowrap (gives you single line) and text-overflow: ellipsis which should do exactly what you want. Unfortunately, text-overflow: ellipsis isn't supported by all browsers (Firefox being the exception in this case).

Devon Govett wrote a ellipsis plugin for jQuery which solves that.

Original blog: Text-overflow: ellipsis for Firefox via jQuery via Wayback Machine since the original blog was deleted.